Kaleidoscope … for me, the word calls up images of floating, ever-changing designs –- beautiful patterns and shifting brilliant colors. I love the way my view is shaped in the eye-piece of that small silver tube sitting on the corner of my desk.

My vision shifts with every twist, or change in lighting as I aim at different sources.

Flowers bloom, starbursts cluster and then explode into new designs, patterns contract and then inflate with constant surprise. It’s beautiful. It’s magical. It’s my own private, tiny window into pleasure – into possibility.

If all of that seems a bit too much credit for a simple toy-like device that doesn’t accomplish anything except to rearrange, refract and reflect bits and pieces of ‘stuff’ through a finite field of view … allow me to explain.

My kaleidoscope is made with two tubes. The smaller one is sealed, full of liquid (most likely mineral oil) with fragments of colored glass, beads, tiny hearts, stars, and other random miniature bits floating in it.

A mirror is embedded in the larger viewing tube, somewhere between the eye-piece (at one end), and a hole through the sides (at the other end). The smaller tube slides through.

Slowly flowing bits float by the mirrored view, creating original designs –refracted in endless reflection.

Each tiny bit has its own shape and color. Each falls through the oil in its own float cycle, depending on its size, the angle at which I’m holding the tube – or the speed in which I twist, turn, lift or drop it. The design possibilities seem endless. My thoughts are inspired  to float from hard reality – to a softer kaleidoscopic view.

If I imagine my life and times to be like the oil … and my current circumstance, my past experience, and my future concerns, to be like the tiny bits floating within it – then I can observe changing patterns and appreciate different design possibilities.

A particular shard of glass could be painful if stumbled upon with naked vulnerability.

Yet that same shard, placed within the viewing tube of my kaleidoscope, might offer brilliant color and contribute to new designs as it falls.

Furthermore, its impact on the patterns I see could change, depending upon the angle at which I choose to hold it, or the speed and direction in which I choose to turn it for viewing.

I’m also reminded that the biggest ‘stuff’ of my life, is still in miniature, from God’s point of view. He’s bigger than anything that concerns me – and whatever comes, the design possibilities are endless.

I have an impact on the patterns (free will), depending on how I hold, turn, and present my circumstances – but with Divine Design, as I trust His workmanship, all is (or will be) beauty.

I may need to change my point of view. My kaleidoscope works to remind me of such possibility.

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”    Romans 8:28 (NKJV)

May you be encouraged and reminded too.

Blessings, Love and Laughter to you,

Marge

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