What a simple thing: colors.

We associate colors with little children scribbling all over any flat surface they can get their hands on.

Learning the “basics” of a new language: rojo, verde, amarillo.

A box of crayons in the art supply store.

But, how lucky are we that we have colors to bring life to everything we see?

Can you imagine if everything in your closet was the same tone?

If you looked down at your plate every meal and saw it was all the same color, would you be excited to consume it?

Would Christmas-time be the same with no green, red, or obnoxiously-patterned wrapping paper and decorations?

Colors are something we experience constantly (unless you are colorblind- sorry), but I don’t know if we acknowledge and appreciate them enough.

Many nations would have indistinguishable flags if color was removed from them.

Splurging on a vacation to the Caribbean would lose its appeal without its crystal blue water and golden-pink sunsets melting into the horizon.

Cities would start to blend into one hazy blur as you walk down its bland streets.

Colors bring life! Colors inspire action!  Colors invoke moods.

They change the way we feel, which changes the way we see.

What we see becomes our reality.

Sometimes we need colors to see past our realities.

To use our imaginations.

To paint our own pictures.

And then we get to share those pictures with others, so they can be free and liberated to do the same.

Colors.

A tribute to colors.

It’s not hard to take note of the color around you when you’re in Mexico 😉

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These words came to me as my attention drifted from our speaker in class to the paper covering our tables in the classroom.   As my thoughts were wavering in and out in the 4^th hour of sitting in a lecture, my ears picked up on a word he spoke: Colorado.  No idea why that word sparked my attention, seeing as I have only been there once in my life during an extended layover on New Year’s Eve.

How did Colorado get its name? Ever since my brief jaunt as an ESL teacher, etymology has surprisingly intrigued me. I put my pen to the paper and started doodling the words Color – A – Do.  And then I thought about the play on words.  It’s definitely a state filled with beauty and nature which inherently means striking, amazing colors. And it’s also a state that attracts active, doer type people- hikers, bikers, all the like.  So I got to thinking: Hey! Maybe Colorado got its name from all the colors that make people want to do things! (Childish, I know, but hey, when inspiration strikes….).

That thought spiraled into a deeper thought about the truth of colors and their power, which we hardly ever acknowledge (at least I haven’t ever acknowledged before)! I started imagining life without color, and how different and lifeless it would be.

Bright and colorful scenery makes us want to live life! You can’t live on the East Coast and see the colorful leaves in the autumn and not want to go to a farm and pick pumpkins and apples.  You can’t live in Southern California and deny the power of the deep blue ocean contrasted with the dry desert topography.    You can’t live in Mexico and say that the vivacity of the culture isn’t reflected in the colors of the architecture around you. Sorry I’m only listing places that I’ve lived but you feelz me.

I think colors inspire us in so many ways, but it’s more subconscious than it is conscious.  But unconscious no more!

The next day after I wrote this whole Colorado-inspired post about colors, we had a worship night with our whole YWAM base.  After about 45 minutes of singing songs I’ve all heard before, they started playing one I had never heard.   It was mostly instrumental until they softly started singing:

Bring Your color in my life

Wipe away the dullness

Bring Your color in my life

Your vibrancy

Bring Your color in my life

Bring Your color in my life…

That’s when the tears started to flow and goosebumps started to raise.  God knows me. He hears me.  He sees me.  He wants to communicate with me.

The whole week’s lecture reiterated the fact that God wants to communicate with us, and this was just an echo of that in my own life.  He speaks to us all differently, and He gives us all our own voices.  Like, how can my ADD in class lead me to a doodle that turned into words for a blog post, which in the end is not about colors themselves, but about the One who brings the color in our lives?? Craziness.

These types of experiences about God blow my mind all the time, and make me want to learn more and more about God and His character.  God knows that I learn more from experiencing things myself, than by listening to lectures in class.  So He made me experience that week’s lesson during worship that night. He knows me. And He knows you.  And all He wants is for us to know Him, too.