What's the Color of Love?

What is the color of love?  You might say, "Color?  That's an emotion, not a definitive color.  What are you talking about?"  Oh, there's hues out there.  They crystallize into beautiful prisms of color poured out in grace from the Father's heart through someone else just to show you how much He really cares.  It's not often seen, but it's there.  And when you do, you'll know it.  It's billboard size in brilliance.  

Some colors are indistinct seen only in black and white.  A life of clouded grey darkens a bruised soul from anger thrown as projectiles of judgmental rejection, relationships are held for ransom and can and finally succumb to outright banishment.  Boy, it's hard to see the sunshine then.  It can be unrelenting cold daggers continually making frigid waters into icicles taking direct aim at a heart every time the thought of that person flies across the mind.  At ice storm's height the raging of the demons howling in the winds of hurt block out the voice of the Spirit of God and reason and forgiveness are unheard.  When the winds subside and ice cocoons the heart with sheathes of stubborn unforgiveness, the only sound can be heard is the crackling, snapping fragments of a broken fragile heart.  

Some people are color-blind.  They give apologies that tend to be more of a wannabe band-aid than anything else.  At best, the proferred "Oh, gee, I'm sorry" by the one that did you wrong can look like a warm, fuzzy teddy bear.  A lot of fluff, but no substance.  You can talk until you're blue in the face and, if you're anywhere over five years old, he'll never talk back or have a relationship with you that goes anywhere.  It's simply an exercise like your mother told you do, "Now tell your brother you're sorry," and you do.  But truly, you never really meant it in the first place and did it only to placate mother so she'd get off your back. Well, that's a nasty color.  It's black and blue.  A bruise that never seems to heal.

So what does all this really have to do with some color of God?  And for Pete's sake, what's it got to do with love?  Here's where the beauty comes in. Here when held up to the light of God you can see it in clarity like an exquisite diamond.  Love is completely unconditional.  It doesn't hold people for ransom.  It doesn't think back on the wrong and try to justify itself for why the silence is merited.  It doesn't place people in a box on the back burner hoping they'll catch fire and burn or place them on a huge burn pile as common rubbish and unredeemable.  It doesn't parade itself with banal superiority, complexity or exude rudeness laced with arrogance but, always exhibiting deference to another, strives at all costs to provide respect, honor, and dignity.  

I think the first color is transparent.  Clear to see.  Clear to hear.  Clear to cry.  Because without repentance of soul there can be no color.  No color at all.  Everything will be monochromatic, a narrowness of mind, soul, spirit that stifles and snuffs out all meaningful relationships.  The toll is great.  It's a life void of the redeeming grace of God.  There's no one that's immune.  Not even dear Aunt Lucy who people would say, "Oh, she's such a dear soul!  She just loves everybody."  Well, not always true.  That may be what is perceived, but not what is true when the door is shut, and the lights are off, and no one is in the room but Aunt Lucy.  In tempting moments, she may remember the hurt or nurture a suffered wrong close to the breast in unbridled unforgiveness.  Everyone has been hurt at one time or another.  Everyone.  It's how we deal with it that is the wringer.  We can try to be all self-sufficient and do it on our own ... and ultimately fail, yet again.  But when the Spirit of God is allowed to move within the soul things change ... and change rapidly.  Suddenly, the bright light of God is illuminated in spirals of glory that shoot through a person's soul to see exactly where a change needs to be made. 

That light illuminates the colors of God bigger than gigantic fireworks displaying awe of His love. "I did this for you.  I really did.  Do you see it yet?  I have redeemed you.  Take it.  It is yours for the asking.  I love you.  I always have.  I always will.  No matter what you do can change that."  And through that liquid repentance of heart as we seek forgiveness and truth we see the true color of love:  The red Blood of Jesus which not only absolves us of sin, but irradicates the pain and sting of the hurts we have accumulated and carried as favored luggage for years.  There is healing in that Blood.  Massive healing that cauterizes the hurt, seals it with His grace and mercy, and then His kisses that make you anew, awash by the Blood of Jesus.  It's red.  Blood red.  The hurt that was done to Him was carried for you.  

Oh, I know.  Sounds preachy.  Maybe so -- but that doesn't make it any less true.  He showed His true colors.  Show him yours and He'll make you new.

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love ...We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love." (Portions of 1 Cor. 13, Message version.)