Y’all f with colors? Like the color wheel and primary colors and secondary colors and such? Y’all get down to that stuff? I have a feeling you do. I’ve realized despite not having a robust vocabulary to describe such things nor the artistic background or understanding to consider myself a savant of beauty, I find myself getting lost in the color around me.
But what about my life? Do I appreciate the colors of emotion, pain, joy, life, breath, and so much more in the same way I appreciate a piercingly golden sunset painting the sky? This question plagued me for much of 2020. I was in a season where the beauty which is always inseparable from this world felt wildly difficult to perceive. It almost felt as if there was a chance it was not there. Recently however, I think the colors have felt alive again. As if a colorful summer breeze drifted into the recesses of my heart. Warm and gentle, it felt as if my eyes were lifted from the ground in front of my feet to the sky dancing with orange and pink as the Sun delighted in using his rays to create a masterpiece.
“Without your wound where would your power be? …. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.” Thorton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled The Water. These words were one color in that breeze. Possibly the first time in my entire life that I could look at the deep hurt within me and see it not as darkness, but as a colorful canvas which the Spirit was turning into a gorgeous and gentle masterpiece. The depth of this life suddenly felt too magnificent to miss. The joys and the sorrows, fully alive, fully in tune, fully colorful.
“ ‘What needs could I have,’ she said, ‘now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.’ ” - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.
To be in Love Himself. To be in relationship with our omnipotent Father God. To be held by Jesus who walks with us daily. To feel the Spirit dancing and singing and beating inside my chest. The Colors of a life and life to the full. Depth returning to life in every moment possible. Colors unmatched by the most beautiful landscapes this world has to offer. Love more intimate than the touch between mother and her newborn child. More vibrant and full than the belly laughter of those I love. A love so gentle it feels as if it were a soft summer breeze, dancing through the green excited for my embrace. To be in Love. To be with him. To see the dazzling display of Colors my God uses in each and every moment in my life.
- Tommy
