Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. -Oswald Chambers
When God made the color purple, God was just showing off.
-Mae Jemison
Like many teenage girls, when I finally had a room of my own, I chose to decorate it in shades of purple. It fit the person in process that I was then. Purple takes the innocent sweetness of posie pink, the audacity of in-your-face magenta, the rage of raw red, the perfect peace of prairie lake blue, the hopeful ascension of sky blue and the deep reverence of mystical indigo and swirls them all around in an unsteady mix of hot and cold. If I look long enough, I can see the colours that make up purple dancing and spinning in a nervous partnership that leaves evidence they are never really fully committed to their roles. This is purple, the colour I chose for the first space I could call mine.
I may be a retired seventy-year old, but I’m not content to squeeze my accumulated years into a single conclusive expression. In my dreams I’m still a bewildered child, a wizened saint, a mischievous flirt, an introspective ponderer, an angry idealist, a conscientious servant, a lover of the unlovely, a reconciled plodder, and an every-which-way-at-once teen trying on each mood and personality in my cache before coming out of my room to run and catch the day. I wonder if, in ancient times, this may be why purple was a colour reserved for priests and royalty (aside from expense). Perhaps only those with the assumed freedom and time to appreciate the tenuous stability of paradox (and its influence on helpless bystanders) could wrap the heights of humility and the depths of pride around themselves in the ambivalent glory of purple and sally forth.
I too shall wear purple. It fits the person in process that I am now. I am, after all, with millions of others, part of a royal priesthood of believers. That’s qualification enough.
My thoughts at least, before I make the same to-do list for tomorrow as I made for today, prop my arthritic knee on my purple pillow, and turn off the light .
Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
“I leave the gift of peace with you—my peace. Not the kind of fragile peace given by the world, but my perfect peace. Don’t yield to fear or be troubled in your hearts—instead, be courageous!
You are the Eternal, the only One. The skies are Your work alone— You made the heavens above those skies and the stars that fill them. You made the earth and everything upon it, the seas and all that lives within their depths. Your creation lives and is sustained by You, and those who dwell in the heavens fall down before You and worship.
Charis: Subject to Change 