Colored Pencils in a Gray World

She colors her graphing blocks on the second half of her math paper.  As she works I simply say, "Hope, isn't it wonderful how God made our world so colorful?" Expecting an answer that only carries the insight of a six year old, I am surprised by her response.

After a pause, she looks up from her coloring and stares deep. "Wouldn't it be sad if I was gray? Just gray. And the ground was gray? And everything else, too?"

She put her coloring pencil down and carefully chooses a different color for the next row.

She continues, "That would be a world without God."

She resumes coloring in the bright blue she has chosen, not realizing the places touched in my heart by her words.

This made me pause. Truly pause. As I looked out the window at the still-green tree in the yard, the crisp blue sky, the little yellow daisies that have recently reappeared in the flower beds, and the browning grass ~ I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I am overcome with gratefulness for a creative and saving God!

How often do I walk through my day muddled by the gray of the world? The shades of dark and drab that are the sin not only in the world, but especially the sin in my own life. My sin that holds me back from experiencing all the vibrant love and joy the Lord offers me.

And even more painful in this moment is the reality of how easy it is for me to ignore the gray that people who don't know my Savior live in? Not only in the moments of each day, but it could be their eternity. The thought of this kind of gray breaks me. The gray my sweet Hope speaks of. The gray of a "world without God." No color. No real hope. The hope of the light that only He can bring into the gray.


Today, I will see the colors, because I will look. I will open my eyes in gratitude for the fact I don't have to live in a gray world, and rejoice in knowing that neither does anyone else. I will choose to do my part today to share this colorful Truth with new urgency!

Thank you Hope, for sweet, much needed reminders.

Thank you Lord for the beautiful tan-skinned, brown haired, pink toenail-painted (with sparkles) little girl sitting next to me who continues to teach me so much.