Living in Color
Saturday, January 5th, 2008One of my favorite comic strips is Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes episode in which Calvin’s dad carefully explains how the world used to exist in black and white, but was flooded with color sometime in the 1930′s.
Do you recall experiencing such a watershed moment in which the after of your life was completely different from the before in at least one significant aspect?
A Significant Moment
I remember the exact day I became a feminist, and before you start getting all excited or huffy about that, you’d better ask me to define the term, because most people don’t know what it means. I didn’t either, but I do now. Yep, a watershed moment that impacted who I am today.
A Trivial Moment
Or how about a more trivial example? Just yesterday, I was complaining to Lewis about how some Web page banners have terrible word breaks in their titles. Sorry, it’s just the editor instinct in me. He could have told me to just GET OVER IT, but instead he kindly introduced me to a basic skill that I guess everyone else in the world already knows, and which I now use several times each day: On my Mac, I can raise or lower the resolution of a Web page by clicking Command-plus or Command-minus. You can, too! And I’ve also discovered that technique works in a variety of other desktop windows, too. My windows behavior will never be the same.
The Most Important Moment
I also remember the night I gave my life over to Jesus. Wow, a hard decision. I had spent months, years, privately wondering what he was really all about, weighing the pros and cons of casting my lot in with him, wishing to be done with the deal, agonizing over the procedure (water baptism in front of witnesses), pondering why it had to be done that way, twisting and turning and crazing over the whole thing. But then there was that night. And they sang that song — I’m sure you’ve heard Just As I Am, too — and almost at the end of the umpteenth verse, I gave up and turned myself in. My most important watershed moment, the moment that painted my world and my life with a depth of meaning that had escaped me before.
Here’s the funny thing: the colors that washed over my formerly gray perspective were initially rather faint pastels. However, at the time, they seemed almost overwhelmingly gorgeous — you know, like putting on a new pair of glasses and walking out of the optometrist’s office telling everyone, “Hey, this tree has leaves on it! And there are birds on that phone line! Who let these sidewalks get so cracked?” But over time, and with experience, the colors of my worldview have deepened, first the blue when I felt some peace, some relief from all the fretting earlier. Then the red as I began comprehending more fully who Jesus was and is to me. And the green is getting stronger every day that I realize what damage we — I! — am wreaking on this garden of Earth, and what I can do to minimize it.
A Question of Pushing the Envelope
When you live in a black and white world, it’s all you know, so you don’t miss the color. And when your world is pastel, it’s easy to be satisfied with the splendid difference it makes. But I want jewel tones to glow through every aspect of my life. Is there a way to push beyond satisfaction and status quo to the best God has to offer? (Click picture for last paragraph.)
