Every Dot of Light

When Georges Seurat unveiled A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in 1886, critics were baffled. Step close to the ten-foot canvas, and you see nothing but tiny, individual dots of color — dabs of blue beside dabs of orange, specks of green next to specks of red. Each dot, on its own, seems meaningless. But step back, and something astonishing happens: a luminous park scene emerges, shimmering with a vibrancy that no single brushstroke could produce.

Seurat had discovered that colors placed side by side, rather than blended on a palette, create a richness that mixing never could. The individual dots do not lose themselves — each one retains its own distinct hue. But together, they produce something none of them could achieve alone.

This is the picture Paul paints of the Body of Christ. "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27). You are a dot of color on God's canvas. Your neighbor in the pew is another. The single mother in the back row, the teenager who slips in late, the retired deacon who always sits on the left — each one a distinct, irreplaceable point of light.

No dot is dispensable. Remove even one, and the image loses something. But step back — look at what God is composing with all of us together — and the view will take your breath away.