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Color Me Amazed

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 15, 2008

Halloween is lurking right around the corner, and glow in the dark costumes hang on every department store's racks. Chemistry is not my forte, for sure, and how they can make paint that glows in the dark is a mystery to me. However, because Halloween is so soon upon us, it's kind of fitting that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008, announced on Oct. 8, goes to three men who played leading roles in the discovery of the remarkable, brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP.

Lest I mislead you, let me explain quickly that GFP is not used to make Halloween costumes glow in the dark, at least, not that I know of. Correct me if I'm wrong. However, the protein, which was first discovered in a jellyfish in 1962, plays a key role in numerous medical research projects. Scientists experimenting on lab mice can now use GFP to "paint" brain cells in a multitude of colors, creating what they've labeled a brainbow, and use it to track neuronal connections. In other words, instead of studying one cell, they can see a picture of cell's circuit and how cells interact with each other. The process is helpful in researching Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and other diseases.

So I guess we can say that a brainbow is a biological way of offering promise to physically damaged people.

Which, of course, leads me from that microscopic world to our larger universe and the rainbow promise God gave us after the flood. He tells us in Genesis 9:13-15, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh."

Rainbows never seem to lose their wonder. People still reach for a camera when they see a rainbow, and double rainbows just have to be shared with everyone you know. Perhaps their appeal is because this promise from God to us comes in a period of history when we are so busy trying to destroy ourselves. Or perhaps it's because it's way up there in the sky, closer to God.

I love to look at rainbows, even now in my adult years when I know there's no pot of gold at the end. Rainbows are so large, certainly one of the things larger than life. On the other hand, God has given our scientists the knowledge to create brainbows, which is also pretty amazing.

But in the eternity scheme of things, comparing that brainbow size to God's rainbow size reminds us just how great our God is, and how small we are in comparison.

That doesn't matter though, for we are God's children, his inheritance, and one day we will meet Him face to face - and see that rainbow round about His throne, "in sight like unto an emerald," that John tells us about in Revelation 4:3.

In the meantime, not having access to brainbows, and having to wait on God for rainbows, we have to content ourselves with little tots trick or treating in glow in the dark costumes.

Hey, in this troubled world , those kids clutching their treat bags and running up to doors all excited by their costumes - well, it's a pretty neat sight, isn't it?

Carole Dickey can be reached at (813) 948-4289.

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