the color orange

It is an interesting thought to consider…this life with Jesus. What unfolds and why? How it looks on the other side of a chapter turned or a season slipping away. 

But I pray this – when we enter new seasons of walking with Jesus, we will see, with greater vibrancy, His purpose with our life for Him. 

I like the color orange - especially when it’s up against the color black (Halloween marketing strategy success). Perhaps because it’s an odd color. Most people like green or blue which are the most plentiful in God’s creation (come on – think about it). Maybe I like orange because it isn’t common in nature until and only during autumn (leaves changing, pumpkins, Indian corn) – which just happens to be my favorite season of the year. 

Try something with me. 

Use your imagination for a moment, as you continue reading.

There’s a beautiful orange watercolor on the table where you are sitting. 

Take that quarter inch paint brush and soak it in the water cup next to it. Stir your brush into the orange watercolor until your brush is steeped, and merely bubbling, with it. (yes - this is my idea implanted in your imagination!).

And then do what I always loved to do as a kid – hold your brush above the off-white 11x17 high quality pounded paper to your left and let that orange color drip, drip, drip a handful of large dots in the middle of the page. 

The orange paint naturally seeps into the paper; its viscosity gives way to the thirsty fibers in the center of the page; the bubbles begin to dissipate. 

Do you remember the first time you watched a movie at home? And I’m not talking about something that was already on the TV but rather the on demand medium, that required loading and the press of a triangular button called “play”? Sorry, I’m not talking about streaming on netflix- we might never get there. 

But for the purposes of my illustration, let us consider the evolution of video quality as we think about our walking with Jesus. 

We look at our large paper, and our orange drip-drop creation is displayed in VHS format (that stands for Video Home System). 

We see, in mere standard definition, a few drops of orange paint bleeding into that paper but mostly rounding out a small section in the center of a mostly white canvas. 

“Slow down and look closer”, says Jesus. (He’s always ready for higher definition while patiently waiting on you). 

We stop, and look closer. Maybe after a few weeks. Perhaps a few years.

And our VHS graduates to a DVD. Finally. Don’t ever go back to the VHS - it’s quite disappointing (and inconvenient for navigation).

All of a sudden, the drops of paint reveal sharper lines or rounded edges, where the fibers of the paper held a strong defense. 

We begin to see the color enhancing the white paper with more clarity, revealing more vibrancy. Orange is becoming an attractive color, believe it or not. It even begins to feel important. 

But just as soon as our interested eyes got focused, our “stopping and looking” turns into something resembling a “hurry up and let’s move on” attitude. We become bored with our new found vision and are looking and hoping for something else to jump off the page and so lose interest because that something else just doesn’t. Because…well, it’s just the color orange.

However, after some time in our moving on, something small changes. For better but usually for more difficult. And we perhaps become aware of the lack of focus on His purpose with our life for Him. We get uncomfortable in the fire of change. We choose right instead of left or self instead of others. We fail or others fail us. We long for a peacemaker in the midst of our pain. We ache in the midst of what feels like breaking. We can’t keep going and so we stop. We slow down. We go back to looking at the few dots of orange that were so interesting, seemingly just a few moments ago. 

And now we begin to see our seemingly senseless drops of color in 4k – a pure vitality of the shade of orange, in all its beauty. The details of the fibers, in the paper, from the tree and how they have stood in contrast to the multitude of fibers going together in the same direction. And we notice something deeper, drawing our attention beyond the mundane, further into the way the host of orange colors and micro fragments of wood interact. 

We can’t help but fight the deep urge to look away - it’s a battle to not be distracted. And yet there’s something reminding us that our longings were never quite as satisfied with that simple and standard definition.

We have a choice. Stay. Or go. 

So let’s slow down. Let us look closer. 

All of a sudden, 4k was yesteryears visual definition. Now we see the flecked shapes of different grains of wood, coming from trees with different densities, due to the imperfections in the choices that the paper manufacturer made, whom accidentally put a giant poplar tree onto the cedar belt for this particular stock of high quality pounded off-white paper. 

Thus, not only do we see a piece of paper invaded by the drip, drip, drip of orange watercolor, that we remember came from the hands of an artist, who had the idea to allow this simple act of filling a large piece of white canvas with a few drops of this unique color. We see not only imperfections, not only different fibers, not only the multitude of different shades of that orange taking to those different fibers, but a greater notice of what has been surrounding the orange and what became of what once was white but now is orange. Our focus begins to perhaps move away to the possibilities of what could have further filled that piece of paper beyond our color of orange. Or what was the intention of the artist by simply keeping it simple?

And then, coming back to our senses, outside of this silly metaphor, our walking in these shoes on this earth, with this wonderful Jesus, comes to an end. 

We then get to see our life in light of His glory. 

We see that our shade of orange was important to keep its small form on this piece of 11x17 paper because the strong defensive fibers were people; those who stood next to me in the midst of a thousand others going a different way. 

And the different shades due to the differing wood densities were ways that I was able to impact someone else’s life and be impacted by them because we were placed here together with great intention by an artist.

I just happened to find a home with many different people surrounding me.

I just happened to find that once broken things could be redeemed in love.  I just happened to be able to bring my color to them for the bigger picture.

One day, that color’s vibrancy will dim but its mark will have been made.

I wasn’t quite sure if an orange watercolor analogy — for the deep complexities of our second-by-second, hour-by-hour, week-by-week, mundane and yet deeply exciting and fulfilling gift that God has given us to enjoy moment-by-moment, month after month, year after decade, until we have seen a life full of relationships, brokenness, and redemption — would be able to bring some sense to this mysterious life with Jesus. 

I pray that as we continue walking with God, our perspectives and perceptions grow to see His purpose with our life for Him. 

by Jason Michael Chapel