Craving Color!

I was craving color, not dull, not grey, not beige…COLOR! 

I was headed to the big city, driving through small towns and winding roads.  On my way, I noticed that the roads I traveled weren't even the typical asphalt grey, but beige.  Ugh…beige. My exciting trip to NYC was not starting out so well. 

Skies were grey, trees were dead, and roads…beige, then faint burnt red.  And then I saw it, a bold blue road sign.  It was beautiful!  A few miles down the road, I saw a delivery truck with faces of little people and cartoon characters taking books to schools, and it had color!  The children’s hospital sign across the top of a tower of sick babies, challenged me to make prayers go up.  Detours, and traffic, and wrecks ahead, led me to my destination… an ugly pink hotel.  I got out of the car, and I was disgusted at my lack of daily color.

It should have been a food group, for crying out loud!

Oh, and all week the sensation, the craving followed me. Hundreds of people were heading to the big city, all in coats and suits of grey. I was longing for someone to stand in the middle of them with a bright green coat on. Like herds of cattle, they were boarding a ferry into the skyline of tall buildings with tops in clouds.  Under ground on trains, they sat in clusters of black bags and boots and scarves.  No one talked, yet they sat side by side. Striving for success and very tired.

Though very real, it all seemed fake.  Buildings with ads selling products that would make life easier, and sexier, and better. I met students selling merchandise in order to make it through school.

I met waitresses overworked and stressed.  I met officers manning streets of protests.

And my color wanted to get louder.  I wanted to talk loudly when all was quiet.  I wanted to laugh and be silly.  I desired to live, to go against the flow of the status quo, and Shine.

And I cried, and prayed at the way my life seemed hard, and suddenly, I realized that I truly live a beautiful life of color.

And most days, I act like my life is colorless.  I live life like I have sunglasses on.  I look through faded, tainted lenses.  I strive and survive.  I look to the future, and move at a city like pace.  I long for what others call success. I live on a Broadway stage, performing.  I live on an ad on a skyscraper, selling my products.  I live at a pace like that of a race, tired.

Can I get an Amen?

We have the answer, and we live with questions.

We have hope, and live hopeless.

We live in color, and see things in black and gray and beige. Why are we living lives of defeat, when we are victorious?

All day, I look for scriptures about color, and all I can think of is this:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

1 Cor. 13:12

 I pray with my husband, and I see a vision of this image, this picture…

I am absolutely blown away.  

In the 1600’s people thought that color was a mixture of light and darkness.  People also felt that prisms colored light.  Isaac Newton proved that it was not the prism that made the color, because he refracted it back together after it reflected the light.  Instead, he concluded that light alone was responsible for color. 

Somehow my craving for color makes perfect sense.  I wasn’t craving color, but light.  My God took the time to explain visually to me what my spirit was longing for. 

Jesus is the Light.  He is and always will be pure truth, pure light. As I live for him, he is reflected in and through me. Others can see the light (the hope) he offers.  Christ in me, the hope of glory.

I realize even more.  According to Wikipedia,

“In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light.”  According to the freedictionary.com, to “refract” means, “to alter by viewing through a medium.”

When the light touches the prism, the color is seen.   

I now see that I am that medium…when I am positioned in his presence (having constant communication and dependence upon him), when I am polished (and refined by his word), and when I am transparent before him, I have the ability to see things differently.

The light is the same (he is the same yesterday, today and forever), but now I am changed.  I can choose to see the color in life.

Recently, I have been looking at life through shaded vision.  I have seen darkness because that is what I have focused on.  I have handled situations with the same fear and dread that the world knows.  I have missed the moments because I have felt pressure to perform and succeed.  I have joined the crowd instead of standing out. 

This is not what God has intended for His children.  We are in this world, but not of it!

Like a prism, we are just a tool, used by God, to reflect the light of Jesus.  We alone do not have the answers, strategies, or plans for life.   We have the LIGHT!  He is the answer.  He is the way, the truth and the life! 

We have the power and authority to bring His life into this world.  We are the light in the darkness, because He is in us.  We have the answer the busy world so desperately needs.

I sit now on what my little friend, Bella calls my “happy couch.”  It is orange, yes orange.  My entire home is filled with colors, teal and green, yellow and orange.  I like it that way.  It’s my house.

Just as I chose to decorate my physical home in bright colors, I chose to decorate my spiritual house in hues of the like.  I desire to be a life so influenced by the presence of my God, that I am dwelling in happy, in praise, in thanksgiving, in peace, and in color…because I crave the LIGHT!

Here's to a life of color in 2015!  Cheers to a life that shines!