Orange
January 27, 2016
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A common question that kids enjoying asking friends and adults is, “What is your favorite color?” You don’t have to look much farther than in the popular Christmas movie “Elf”, in which Buddy the elf picks up a phone in his father’s office and asks a complete stranger, “Buddy the elf, what’s your favorite color?”. I’ve spent a lot of time working and teaching children and as you can imagine I’ve been asked, “what’s your favorite color probably 100 times?”. Most people respond with answers such as red, blue, pink, or purple. I myself have also been fascinated and have loved the color Orange. Orange is a color that is always bright, it stands out from the other colors, and is filled with enthusiasm and energy. In fact, the next time you’re around me just take a look at my feet and you’ll see that my favorite color is with me always.
Every week I find time to read at least 1 book and this week I’ve began reading a book that’s color alone has enticed me to read it. The pages of the book are contained in a beautiful and bright colored orange cover. The book is entitled “Think Orange” by Reggie Joiner and focuses on the idea of what can happen when church and family can collide and work together. With that focus in mind, you may be wondering why did Joiner come up with a weird title like “Think Orange”. Joiner came up with this concept by looking at the two factors that have an impact on a child’s moral and spiritual development. These two factors are the child’s family and the church. If you’ve ever taken an art class you may recall that in order to make a secondary color like orange, you need to combine the colors red and yellow. Joiner associates the color yellow with the church and the color red with the family.
The color yellow is associated with the church, because the church is called to be a light that shines on Jesus. Joiner informs the reader that back when the temple was in Israel that there was a specific lamp thats only job was to shine on the bread of life (pg. 30). Sometimes the church can become distracted on controversial topics or stances on subjects, but the job of the church is to shine on the bread of life (Jesus). The color red is associated with the family because the family is supposed to provide the child with constant and consistent love and affection (pg. 42). Not every family is the same, every family faces different challenges and handles situations differently, however every family is called to love and support each other. Together if the church and family can come together we as a church can “think more orange” and help each other out as the early church community once did.