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So for this little blog post I felt a little lost with how to start. After struggling to find a theme of some sort to focus my writing I finally just sat down and asked God what I should write about.

Write about the colour blue.

Okay. That’s curious... but why not? Might as well try at least.

Blue is the colour of sadness and loneliness. If you tell someone you’re feeling blue it conveys the message that you’re feeling down, under-the-weather, or sad.

Blue is the colour of slow mornings and sleepless nights. It is also the colour of sleep that doesn’t fade, and the numb of emotions. It pulls and pushes you around with strength that doesn’t allow you a say in the matter.

Blue is the colour of heartbreak that happens so slowly you almost never noticed it, until that one day you see it and you wonder ‘How did this happen’. It is both wretched sobbing and silent tears. It is the void between ever distancing friends.

Blue is sterile, it is the colour of hospital scrubs and gowns. It is the scent of disinfectant and the unnatural glow of too bright fluorescent lights everywhere. Blue brings reminders of a deep, unsettling, discomfort with the realisation that you are never completely in control of your own comfort or pain.

Blue is a cool colour, and evokes memories of winter months where frost bites and snow makes everything still, everything quiet. When you see that blue light filtering in through your window shades and you just know that everything outside is covered in a blanket of snow. And you know you need to shovel it but you just want to sleep, wondering why humans don’t hibernate through the winter. The child inside you quietly sings with glee, faded memories of snow days— school cancellations— bringing forth delight.

Blue is also the expanse of the sky and the depths of the ocean. Blue is the colour of calm and serenity. Blue invites you to look further.The sky and ocean look blue because they are rich with molecules that scatter short wavelength (blue) light much more effectively than other wavelengths of light. But this takes significant compounding such that the air in front of you, or your glass of water won’t show blue, but greater expanses of air or water will. Blue invites depth.

Blue is fresh and clean. It is the colour of Dawn soap. It brings memories of washing, scrubbing, and rinsing away. Showers, and baths, and doing your laundry. I wonder what could feel more cleansing to the earth than a good rain, washing away debris and dust.

Blue is the colour of God wiping the earth clean in Noah’s time. And though Noah may have been tired of the colour after 40 days and 40 nights, there was blue in the rainbow— God’s promise to never flood the earth again.

Blue is the colour of a new day. Fresh, cool and oh so beautiful. It is the colour of crisp fresh air, and peace that surpasses all understanding. Blue is the unexplainable steadiness in your bones because you know that through it all God is there, and his kingdom is near.

Blue is both the storm and the calm afterwards. It is the depths of sleep, and the sharp realization that you are alive. It is the deep ache and the steady hope.

Blue is the colour of my summer.
It is blue because I am sad.
It is blue because I am lonely and isolated.
It is blue because the world— at least for a little while— stopped and was silent.
It is blue because I have had time to examine my life, and my relationship with God.
It is blue because I have spent time quietly looking further.
It is blue because I have had time to rest from the frantic work of school.
It is blue because I have taken time to clean and reorganize.
It is blue because I have taken time to be still.
It is blue because I still have hope.

Though my blue summer is full of sadness and loneliness that at times I feel like I’m drowning in, it is also rich with God’s promises.That He hears, He sees, and He is working to make all things beautiful.

If you find this in any way relevant, I’d like to invite you to examine that which makes your summer blue. Lay the parts you don’t like against the parts you do. However you are tired from what makes your summer blue, I invite you to reflect on how you are blessed by what makes your summer blue.

Be reminded that blue is beautiful and God is making all things new.