Blue

   

Why do we equate blue with sadness?  Two other descriptors fit better.

At 8:18 this morning, I am standing at the beach of an inlet within a world of the blues.  The azure of the sky and the sapphire of the water are separated by a thin strip of land.  The pervasiveness of the color inspires two adjectives.

Reflective.  When I illustrate water, I always make it blue.  But I’m visually lying.  Water is only blue when it reflects that color above it.  (Scientifically, water absorbs the red part of the spectrum, leaving behind the blue for us to see.)  In a sense, the ocean responds to the heavens above.  The deeper the ocean, the richer the blue.  On a cruise a few years ago, the intensity of the deep, cobalt waters was amazing.  I had no idea nature had such a color.

That responsiveness reminds me of how we pray that God’s will might be “done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Creation is to reflect, to align with, the hue of heaven.

Mysterious.  From the days of ancient man until now, nothing on earth is more enigmatic than the sea.  I can imagine a beachcombing psalmist of old picking up washed-ashore leaves and imagining a hidden world under the waves, known only to God. The Lord, himself, refers to a submarine realm:

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

                        or walked in the recesses of the deep?”  Job 38:16

I remember some years ago, news broke of a deep-trench ecosystem that survives without a photon of light.  I thought, we have just found God’s secret garden.  That’s why he was walking down there.  So much still eludes our knowledge of the deep, where man’s footprints will never be found.  Mystery is a good thing.

As if on cue, something large swirls the water near me.  I call to my wife and daughter and point to it.  We follow the intermittent trail of agitation as it swims by without us catching a glimpse of what it is. Like in the great monster movies of old, the ambiguity is powerful on our imaginations.  But the psalmist I’ve conjured up in my mind tells me, with some assurance, it’s a baby Leviathan.

So, people can have their blue sadness.  When I sing the blues it will be a melody of praise and wonder.

Your love, Lord, is unfathomable.  The ocean holds many mysteries to us, but you know all of your creation intimately.  And you want everything to find its wholeness in your Son, for whom and by whom everything was made.  Help us to reflect heaven’s hues that your kingdom may come through us.