The Prism on the Windowsill

In 1666, a young Isaac Newton darkened his room at Trinity College, Cambridge, and allowed a single beam of sunlight through a small hole in the shutters. He held up a glass prism, and what had appeared to be simple white light shattered into a full spectrum — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet — each color distinct, each one hidden inside what seemed uniform and uncomplicated.

That prism did not create anything new. It revealed what was already there.

This is what the Word of God does to the human heart. We walk through our days convinced we understand ourselves — our motives, our loyalties, our faith. We look like simple white light. But when Scripture passes through us, it separates what we thought was inseparable. It divides soul from spirit, intention from self-deception, genuine devotion from religious performance.

A friend once told me she had been reading the Sermon on the Mount for years before it finally cut her. "I always thought I was generous," she said. "Then one Tuesday morning, Jesus's words about giving in secret showed me I had been performing charity for applause my whole life."