Shades of Gray

     Today I went to the home of a former colleague who is a retired art teacher. She is giving me painting lessons. My job was to create value charts using black and white acrylic paints or black with water for water colors. Tints are when white is added and shading is when black is added. Essentially what I had was a sequence of white, shades of gray and black.

     Life is that pattern as well. White in light is a combination of colors (note the rainbow), but an absence of colors in pigments such as paints. Black is the absence of light which makes darkness, but a combination of colors when using pigments. Everything in between is gray area, the adding to or taking away of white/light or black/light. Confusing since many can't agree on all this thus it becomes a "gray area."
     People that have said they died and saw heaven, before being brought back to life, often note that they were drawn to a bright light and saw rich colors like none they had ever seen on earth before. Others that had near life experiences talk of darkness that was so dark they could feel it, it was thick and foreboding. Since God is light, then it would make sense that hell is the absence of light thus pitch black. There's no gray area in between heaven and hell where people can just hang out into eternity. I John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. KT

Rainbow of colors in this Macaw's feathers. 

Job 24:13,15,17 (NIV) "There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its ways or stay in its paths... The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk; he thinks, 'No eye will see me,' and he keeps his face concealed... For all of them, deep darkness is their morning; they make friends with the terrors of darkness."