Think of the colors and what they represent. Red is love, green is life, blue is sorrow, yellow is joy, pink is youthfulness, white is purity, and so forth. Now think of your favorite colors and what they mean to you. Perhaps you like pink because it reminds you of when you were a little girl, or you like orange because Fall is your favorite season. Maybe you like blue, because it reminds you of lazy summer days on a lake or ocean, when all you had to do was swim and go fishing. No matter how specific the reason is, we all have our favorite colors. Those colors represent a special feeling to us.
For me, that color is purple. Purple is the color of hope.
I have told this to people in the past and they often respond with confusion. What does purple have to do with hope? After all, it is so close to blue, the color of sadness, and it can be so dark. Plus, purple is often associated with weird things, like bruises and eggplants. What about purple makes you think of such an important part of life?
Well, purple is the color you see before a sunrise.
There is one sunrise in particular that is the reason behind my love of this color. It was the February of my senior year of high school. College loomed in the distance, and I was so afraid of it. In just a few months I would move to a different town, leaving my friends and family behind, and I would have to start a new life by myself as an adult. But on that winter morning two years ago, as I took my dog outside and stood in the cold waiting for her, I noticed the sky turning into some interesting colors. The dark navy of the night sky began to mix with the bright pink of the sunrise, and the result was the most beautiful shade of purple that I had ever seen.
The sun then peeked its face over the horizon, turning that purple into brilliant shades of pink and orange. But the color purple was what tugged at my heartstrings, because I realized what God was trying to tell me. The dark blue sky was the feeling of dread that I had been feeling up until then, and the pink and orange sunrise was the good that the future held for me. But the purple, oh the purple was the promise of that wonderful sunrise. When I saw the sky turn purple, I had hope that the darkness of night would give way to the bright light of day. My blue dread of college had turned into a purple hope for my future.
So, no matter how you approach 2017, I hope your New Year's day is a purple one.
