Have you ever looked at the sky after a storm and seen the beautiful colors of God’s bow in the sky? That rainbow is a promise that He would never send a world-wide flood again, and despite the floods and hurricanes and tsunamis, He has kept that promise for thousands of years.
But there is a different kind of color spectrum, one that might not seem as vivid to our mind’s eye, and that is the color of our skin. Have you ever looked closely at the various skin tones we all wear mostly hidden beneath our clothes?
We see the color in the faces of people we meet and often we judge a person’s character by the shade of their skin. Now stop and think about that. Does that really make any sense at all?
I am a white red-head with freckles. All of my life my skin has been pale white. When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to tan. I didn’t like white. I wanted at least a nice light brown. Guess what? I know how to get the sun to give me the perfect burn. Red. Not brown. And it’s not pretty. It’s painful.
NOW you might call my sun exposure a “tan” but it’s really just my freckles and age spots (I didn’t really say that) merging together or getting brighter or something. But I still do not tan. And I never will. So I’m a white red-head and that’s me.
The other night on the news, I saw a beautiful young very dark black teenager interviewed for selling t-shirts. The idea came from what began as bullying because of her skin color. I looked at her gorgeous hair and smooth, freckle-less skin, and thought, “are you kidding me?” Why on earth would a beautiful girl be bullied for the color God chose for her skin?
And then I thought, how many different colors and shades and hues of white, black, brown, off-white, and probably shades I can’t describe, make up the human race? And don’t you know that God chose to gift every one of us with a different shade of beauty? Yes, even freckles.
If we could stand side by side across the world and take a photo from the sky, I wonder what sort of rainbow we would make with our bright gorgeous faces wearing the exact skin made especially for us.
And if we believe there is a Creator God who made each one of us in His image, why is there even a hint of conflict between our colors?
We call it racism because our varying colors often/usually denotes different races.
We don’t come from the same areas of the earth.
So what?
I thought I was mostly German. I’m not. I’m mostly Norwegian.
Perhaps you come from Egypt or Iran or Africa or Syria or the Netherlands or Australia or Hawaii or Brazil or China or Singapore or Canada or England or Greece…how many countries are there?
And don’t you know that every single one of us will have a different look, a different language, a different skin color, a different culture?
Again, I say, SO WHAT? Should a Christian ever notice a difference in a negative way? Did Jesus?
I get angry when I see a little girl bullied because of her beauty. Her black beauty. Or her freckled beauty.
Any time we judge a person because of the color of their skin we grieve the Lord who created them.
And I hope this isn’t true in our churches. I know it isn’t in mine, but I pray we are not being the ones who would condemn what God calls beautiful.
I have neighbors from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation living all around me. African Americans live next door. A family from Iraq lives on the other side. Albanians live behind and in front of us. Syrians live in several different houses. And Persian or Iranian Muslims live a few houses down.
Our small group at church has two families from China, some from the Philippines, Romania, and a Messianic Jew from Europe.
Don’t you know that God loves each one of us?
He created us to be different for a reason.
Perhaps it was so that we could practice love the way it was meant to be.
It’s harder to love those who are different than we are.
It’s easy to love those who think, talk, look, act, walk, and believe like we do.
But God didn’t make us that way. And He didn’t curse one color over another, no matter what some say about it or try to take from Scripture.
What He did say was that someday, in eternity in heaven, there will be people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation there. Because God makes room for everyone. Because God loves us all and wants each one of us to believe in Him.
Billy Graham once said that Jesus was not white or black. He was brown. That about fits in the middle of our color spectrum of races, wouldn’t you say? He was a middle-eastern Jewish man. And He died for the Gentile races, of which I’m a part, just as much as He died for the Jews.
God loves the spectrum of colors of skin He placed us in.
Even if we don’t like ourselves – and I still wish I could tan and am not a super fan of my freckles – but God loves me just the way I am.
He loves you just the way you are too.
And the only change He wants to make in us is the condition of our heart, not our skin color.
~Selah
#livegrace #itsnotaboutskincolor #nomoreracism #lovelikejesusloves Personal, MusingsSeptember 12, 2018
