Recently, I have had to choose what colours I would like the walls at the manse painted. I’m not great with choice, but when it comes to paint colours, there is a LOT of choice! In the end I did settle on a colour, but staring at paint charts made me ask a question. Who’s job is it to name colours? Because I think I can probably name about 12 colours. And then maybe variants of them with adjectives such as “bright” or “dark” or “pastel”. And then maybe combinations of said colours, such as “bright bluey green” (which is not the same as bright greeny blue). But there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of colours and none of them have such sensible names. At best they might be named after something which in some part is that colour, such as teal (bright bluey green) – named after a duck – which is mostly grey. At worst, the names of colour are works of greatly imaginative creative writing which tell you nothing about the colours themselves, such as; “seldom seen”, “going away”, and “sailors hat”, which all as far as I can tell are shades of grey.
“But”, I hear you say, “what is in a name”? is it not merely a tool by which colours can be described after all? Well, perhaps you are right, although if the only purpose of their names are to describe them, then I think whoever it was at Crown paints who came up with; “never ever” could have tried harder for a paint that they were trying to sell! But names are important. They carry meaning. As we have discovered during our Sunday services, many of the names of Characters in the Bible tell us something important about their story. And God often gives them new names after they have come to know Him, to demonstrate how they have been changed because of knowing Him.
So too, our names are important. Not just our given names, but descriptions of us. What we call ourselves and what we allow ourselves to believe of what others call us too. If we call ourselves guilty, or stupid or not good enough, we’ll begin to believe it. But that’s not what God calls us and He’s the only one who truly knows us. God calls us; “beloved children”, “friends of Jesus”, and “temple of the holy spirit”. He calls us; “Free”, “forgiven”, and “holy”. He even calls us His “craftmanship”. And what God says we are is what we truly are! So next time you look in the mirror, remember who you’re looking at!
Originally written for the August 2024 ABC Newsletter
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