ABOUT ROY G. BIV....

When a burst of sunlight follows a rainstorm, I often go outside to search the sky for a rainbow. It reminds me of the Biblical reference to this phenomenon after the Great Flood of Noah's time. After this faithful surviving husband and father, and his family, departed the ark (along with the animals), he saw a bow of colors in the sky. Genesis 9 says God communicated that this band would be a “sign of the covenant between Me and earth” that He would never again flood the entire world to cleanse it from sin.

I don't understand all the science behind how light rays become a rainbow. But when I see a rainbow, I think both of Noah and of the color meanings that emerged from its spectrum. As a child I learned the acrostic “Roy G. Biv” as a way to remember the color order. Later, learning the meaning of colors expanded my awe of the rainbow.

RED: Sacrifice, blood in Old Testament worship system and the bloody death by crucifixion of Christ for humankind's salvation. A close cousin, scarlet, used for sin. If you've ever passed quickly over Isaiah 1:18 (“though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow”), go to this website be awed by details on the grub used in ancient times as a red dye: The 'Scarlet Worm'.

ORANGE: not mentioned in Bible, but a “sacred” color for some Eastern religions. As a “fiery” hue, it connects with purification, passion, divine glory, and harvest.

YELLOW: negative meaning, for sin and fallibility. Leviticus 13 mentions yellow hair as a sign of the dreaded disease leprosy.

GREEN: like living plants of creation: hope, renewal, life, abundance, God's blessings.

BLUE: heaven. Also: sacrifice, atonement, salvation, purity. As “heaven,” the gateway to God Himself. Exodus 24:10 describes a vision of God and the pavement under His feet as bright as the blue sky. Also: the Law and Ten Commandments, something dedicated to a holy purpose, royalty, sacrifice, atonement, salvation, purity. Used for items in the Tabernacle, it was meant to encourage people to look to the sky—and by implication, heaven—to remember the true God. The Bible connects the color to power, importance and wealth.

INDIGO: a blend of blue and purple or violet. The dye was derived from a marine snail called the “murex mollusk” (see next color).

VIOLET (or purple): A valuable dye in ancient cultures connected with royalty or wealth, purple was sourced from a tiny Mediterranean snail whose gland produced only a single drop of the dye. One pound of dye reportedly took four million mollusks. Because of the dye's rarity and value, it was reserved only for those who were very wealthy, or worthy of some special merit or favor by the people. The dye likely contributed to the wealth of Lydia of Thyatira, the first Christian convert in Europe and known as “a seller of purple” (Acts 16). (Centuries later, in Victorian England, laws reserved purple or violet garments for wardrobes of royalty or the wealthy!).

So why all this chatter about colors? Because it's fascinating...and also intriguing that creation glorifies its Creator with a mysterious arch of brilliant colors when rain gives way to sun. Genesis 9 calls this natural sign a “covenant,” a visible reminder of God's grace when we fail Him. And maybe, instead of the symbolism of each hue of the rainbow, that Promise needs to be what I remember.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 19

DÉCOR
“The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.” –Revelation 21:19

Popular artwork about Heaven often portrays it as white-robed beings floating among fluffy white clouds. As though God’s creativity ended with vanilla! The truth is that the Bible speaks of Heaven as a place of brilliant color. Descriptions of the New Jerusalem—God’s specially-made Heavenly city—nearly explode with extravagant color. The old apostle John, accustomed to gray rocks of his island prison, grabbed gemstone names to try to describe the colors he saw in his vision of Heaven.

When his vision took him to God’s Throne Room, he said the One sitting there “had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne” (Rev. 4:3). Scholars still puzzle about “jasper,” but think it was green or yellow. Carnelians (sardine) are deep red. Emeralds are a rich, pure green. The Heavenly city’s foundations are decorated with precious stones: jasper (greenish or yellow), sapphire (azure), chalcedony (unknown, perhaps green and blue), emerald (green), sardonyx (red and white), sardius (red), carnelian (red), chrysolite (yellow), beryl (sea-green), topaz (yellow), chrysoprase (golden green), jacinth (violet), and amethyst (rose-red). Not to forget gates of pearl and streets of transparent gold (Rev. 21:18-21). Every hue of the rainbow is there.

John’s vision doesn’t necessarily mean that Heaven is actually studded with precious stones. Yes, God could reach into earth’s grimy mines and dig out precious stones, then cut and polish them, and finally mount them on Heaven’s city. He could also simply create new gems to make His Heavenly home beautiful beyond description. Or, without using gemstones, He could make Heaven a never-ending rainbow.

Even earthly rainbows draw our hearts inexplicably upward. A storm rushes through, the sun glistens through the racing clouds, and we look in the sky for that colored arch from refracted light. Always, the underside is purple, then come indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Sometimes there are two rainbows.

For thousands of years, that transitory arch has reminded us of God’s faithfulness. He chose a man of the soil and of faith to preach about purity amidst moral blackness. From the unlikely pulpit of an enormous boat construction project, Noah urged repentance for 120 years. Then the skies blackened, boiling with furious storms until the entire earth flooded. Its living colors were destroyed. For over a year, Noah floated in a dim and stinky zoo. When the waters receded enough for land to emerge, and for Noah to make a fresh start, God sent color. The rainbow. And with it, His promise to never again flood the earth (Gen. 9:12-17).

What else, but colors pulled from the millions of hues embedded in rainbows, would do for Heaven? Heaven will be so full of delicious, delightful, and desirous colors that no artist’s palette could hold even a tiny fraction of them. If the colors of Heaven were printed on the color cards of a paint store, they’d fill the world—and more. If Heaven had a box of crayons, we’d be naming the colors for millennia.

Artists understand the amazing world of color. Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic and mouth artist, called her much-acclaimed efforts only feeble attempts to mirror what she sees. “I imitate with a gray pencil,” she said, “what God has painted with an infinite array of colors. My drawings, bounded by the edges of a sketch pad, can never fully portray God’s boundless nature above, beneath, and around us.” (1)

Heaven’s not a gauze of clouds or a mist machine set on high. It is exploding colors in unimaginable brilliance. One man who believes he had a vision of Heaven during his ninety minutes of being “dead” reported sensing a “bright iridescence.”(2) Something “iridescent” is constantly changing colors. The light breaks in countless hues—reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos, violets—dancing and sparkling and almost putting senses on overload. Will all these colors mean a confused circus of Heavenly décor? Not at all. God has always been a God of order. But He’s also a God of creativity.

If the walls of your earthly home are nondescript ivory or tan, hang on. Could God, who knows the colors you truly love, be planning periwinkle for your special place? Or hydrangea? Or even daffodil, alpine lake blue, or the neon green of a jungle frog? Will the rainbow stripe the walls of your Heavenly place? Remember, to see a rainbow, we always look up in hope. Whatever the décor, it will be beautiful. After all, God designed it!

Prayer: Creator God, when I stop to think that You created colors that delight the eye, my vision of Heaven really brightens up! Amen.

(1) Joni Eareckson and Steve Estes, A Step Further (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), pp. 176-77.
(2) Don Piper with Cecil Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2004), p. 33.