Seeing Green

[Essie frolicks in the apple-green grass of my in-law's backyard]

I am drawn to the color green, and not the green of recycling, like “going green,” or green as in just any old Crayola-crayon green. Chartreuse, in particular, calls to me from the color wheel, a brilliant yellow-green, like the color of sour green apples, verging on the visual tartness of a Granny Smith.

It’s not a color I ever wear; I’d never pick out a chartreuse-green angora…ever. I wouldn’t paint my walls with this happy color; it just might need an anti-depressant to tame the wild party it would perpetually attempt to invite. I’ve never picked it in any man-made setting that I can think of. Man doesn’t do it well; it cannot be manufactured accurately enough.

The color of my backyard will almost do it; it will just begin my cravings for this gratifying eye candy. It starts the smile that teases the corners of my mouth. But after awhile, I find my heart yearning for a more luminous Oregon-green shade, one that might more resemble my in-law’s Portland-grown backyard. Hence echoes the term, the grass is always greener…

I think it might be God’s favorite color, too, as it appears to be the accent color with which He painted almost every part of nature…the leaves of trees, the stems of flowers, the mossy blanket across age-old rocks, and the prevailing zest of sprawling fields in the spring, summer, and fall.

This jovial hue, God’s natural Paxil, is the color of life, of youth, of growth, of regeneration and rejuvenation, somehow continually right-siding my often murky-gray spirit.

In the Wordless Book, a children's book of colors representing the road to heaven, gold is the color of the paved streets of heaven; black is the color representing man’s sinfulness; red symbolizes the blood that Jesus paid on the cross as our Redeemer; white denotes the color of snow, as His blood wipes away the infinite sin debt we owe to an infinitely holy God; green is the color of sanctification, the process by which we grow in Christ and become more like Him every day.

Green is the point at which I am now, walking with Him on this rough, narrow path, this process of taking up my own cross daily, moment by moment, and following after Him.

After this pattern I hope to be as green as can be.

[This post was inspired by a writing contest at http://scribbit.blogspot.com/2008/09/septembers-write-away-contest.html]