Colouring

Over the last three or four years I have found colouring pictures online to be a good way to relax and reduce stress. Nothing new there. That is what their advertising says they are good for.

The daily picture for today was a forest scene . As I started to colour it in, it became clear that it was an autumnal scene with vivid reds and yellows. As I look out the window at the sun on the snow I wondered why they would post such a scene at the end of January? Then I thought of family living in South Africa who were just making the transition from summer into fall. The internet is world-wide and someone there could be working on the same picture! Suddenly the picture made sense to me. And isn’t that the truth? Until we know why something is written or said, we can’t always appreciate it or understand it’s meaning.

In some pictures you will use a lot of light, bright colours while in others the colours are mainly somber. What I have notice over time however is that in both cases the picture doesn’t really come alive until it has a dash of the opposite colour hue. Adding a dark colour makes the bright picture brighter, while adding a slash of a bright colour deepens the darkness of another picture. Apparently we need all colour hues in a picture to fully appreciate what it is trying to say to us.

This past year our lives have been full of darkness and gloom as we struggled with the pandemic. But it is those moments of light that have made the year bearable. So thank you to all who have been responsible for the moments of light in my life over that time.

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world.” Matthew 5:16 (MSG)

If we take the time to discover what the Bible said to the people who wrote the words and why those words were important to them, in their place and time, it will help us to see how those same words can be enlighten our thinking today. Understanding the why goes a long way towards understanding the massage for the world of today

Comments

Judy ImrieFebruary 6, 2021 at 10:45 AM
Hi Lynn: Thought it interesting how you find shades deepen or enhance a colouring project. For some reason the story of The Loaves and Fishes came to mind and when I looked it up the words of Jesus at the end, asking his disciples to pick up the left over bits and pieces of the meal that had fed thousands took on a whole different shade of colour. "Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. " John 6:10. I had spent the week finishing a book of memories of all seasons especially for my grandchildren and those words took on a new colour. The fragments, the remnants I had been gathering were memories...blessings of the good times so that they would not be lost during this continuing season of so many losses for so many people. This indeed adds hope in this bleak midwinter!

Judy Imrie
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