The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.
Isaiah 40:8 NIV
I love color! I love playing with colors; different shades of a color, different color combinations- all of it! There is so much color in the world and so many shades- more than we can even realize! There are many mornings that I find myself driving over the lake of a local state park and I’ll catch my breath at the sunrise over the lake- it looks like an exquisite pastel painting. All misty, diffuse light with the pink and orange rays of sunlight shining through the mist. Later in the day I’ll pass through again everything is different. Later in the day, the lake is a bold picture of a bright blue of the sky, the green of the trees, and dark emerald of the water- a nearly different scene altogether. All because of color.
There are so many places in this world, ones that are absolutely saturated in color that I want to see. I can’t imagine the vivid colors of nature in places like New Zealand. I want to see the deep emerald fields of Ireland, and the sandy browns and dessert greens of the American West.
I see all this and I think how can anything be anymore vivid? Color is a way of interpreting vitality, life. When cheeks become ruddy after exertion or when we take on a tan in summer’s sun we say we look good, healthy, glowing, full of color. How can anything be any more real than this world full of innumerable colors? I tend to think of heaven generally as a golden monotone city, I know this isn’t true but when my young self heard Heaven described for the first time that is what I thought, and that is the image that still first comes to mind today. But that is all wrong. It will be full of color- so much color! More than we can possibly imagine.
The thing is that this earth is not the realest thing that there is. The trust is that Heaven is the realest- and this life is but a dim reflection of the next. I imagine when we get to Heaven and look back that we will chuckle at the fact that we thought this earth was the real deal because we will have then seen all the colors of Heaven in all their glory. And we will see Him in all His glory too.