Grey streets

This post is from a sunday school lesson I did last year.

There’s loneliness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now
It feels like cold blue ice in her heart
When all the colors mix together - to grey
And it breaks her heart

There’s an emptiness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now
It’s more like cold blue ice in her heart
She feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life
She could change everything about her using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together - to grey
And it breaks her heart
It breaks her heart
To grey

Those are some of the lyrics to the Dave Matthews Band song, Grey Street. Although DMB would by no means be considered a Christian music group, there are some very Christian truths that really stand out to me in this song. As a Christian I believe that God created the world and everything in it; that the devil cannot create anything new, only mangle and pervert the good things God had made; and that despite the devils best attempts, God's love and truth often shines through.

This song is about a girl who is trying everything she can to change her life. She wants to use bold, bright colors to hide the emptiness, and lonliness she feels within. In my sunday school class we talked about some of the emotions, feelings and other things associated with different colors:
Red - love, courage
Yellow - sunshine(joy)
Green - money, care for the environment
Blue - calm/peace
It's easy to see how someone would want to convey these things the those around her, and using bold, bright colors seems like the way to do it. But anyone who has had a basic art class can tell you what happens when you start mixing paints of different colors together. At first, you might just get different hues and shades, but if you mix too many together, you just get a colorless grey. If you mixed all the colors together, you'd get black. In a high school sunday school class it's easy to want to use kids as examples..."you probably all know someone like this in school," or "there are a lot of teenagers who try to do this." But the truth is, many adults never outgrow it. We've probably all tried at some point or other to paint ourselves a certain color...to try and portray a certain image for co-workers, friends, even fellow church members. But paint and pigments are very limited, and don't always mix the way we want them to.

Now we're going to leave art class and turn to physics and theology. This is the exciting part.

First of all, the good news for all believers is that God said he would wash us "as white as snow." No matter how many times we've applied new coats of paint, or tried to change ourselves, God can strip all that away. But just like black is the sum of paints of all colors, white is the absence of color right? Does God want to make us bland and boring, with no personality at all?

Jesus told his disciples He was the "light of the world." Here comes the science. Light acts opposite from solid pigments. When white light passes through a prism, you see all the colors of the rainbow. It works in reverse too. When you shine all the different colored light together, they show up white. So to answer our question, no, God does not expect Christians to be colorless. He intends for all of us, with the light of Jesus shining through us, to show all the colors of the spectrum to the world.

One of the verses from Grey Street runs like this:

How she wishes it was different
She prays to God most every night
And though she swears it doesn’t listen
There’s still a hope in her it might
She says, “I pray
But they fall on deaf ears,
Am I supposed to take it on myself?
To get out of this place”

The mistake that the girl in the song makes is that she does try to take it on herself, instead of giving up, and giving in and letting God do what only He can do. She doesn't believe God is listening to her so she probably wouldn't have noticed when He has answered.

The challenge for us, then, is just to keep our selves out of the way. The moment we start trying to color our lives or actions in a certain way, we're painting over the light that should be shining out of us. As Christians we are charged with presenting Christ to the world, but the only way for us to do that is to get out of the way. I know that nothing I do will ever save anyone, and thank God it's not up to me to do that. I just need to let Christ work in my life; let his light shine through me to others.