The Phil Files

The wise one said it powerfully and clearly:

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God (Proverbs 14:31 TNIV).

A photo from a recent trip to Africa called to mind this passage. The color, shadowing, and sunlight called me to this message. But this image is more than that for me. I can still remember the smell of that moment … the smell of the fish being cleaned about fifteen feet to the left of this picture, the smell of the morning cooking smoke still hanging in the air, the smell of human waste barely detectable in the breeze, and the aroma of baby spit up smelling like moldy soy. I also remember the emotional smells: a faint aroma of hope celebrating the intervention of Compassion into the lives of a twenty-two year old married HIV positive woman of with two young children and the clean, prepared, and loving tenderness of the project worker who shared scripture and love, as well as her expertise on health and nutrition, with this family a world away from where I live.

Now if I can just live to honor God in this … I so want to be a person of honor, who honors, the LORD who has been so gracious with me, by being a real, tangible, fragrantly pleasing aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15). To bet a part of culture change, as Randy’s Watercooler Wednesday suggests, I’ve got to keep all the odors as images in my heart and then act personally.

While I like the Scripture graphic (aka PowerPoint background) with the text, of the three related images, I like the one without any text or title most of all. All three — the Bible text, the title, and the plain image — can be downloaded free from Heartlight.org. Check on the latest images, or use the search for color, Bible reference, or key theme. Here’s a small version of the real image:

 

Color, for some of us, is everything. For others, like a good friend of mine I work with, color is a mystery — he is absolutely color blind. I’m not sure how I would make it in such a world. I love the artistic use of b/w photography. This brings out elements and lines and mysteries I don’t see in color. But, to live without color always, would be hard to imagine.

As much as I would like to think that color is an individual, preference sort of thing, colors change us, move us, and touch us in ways that similar and yet uniquely distinct. So there are color palettes. God gave us the rainbow. Artists work within, or intentionally defy, acceptable color palettes. Some of us just goober up the canvas, interior design, website, or whatever medium we defile, because we pay no attention to color palettes.

So to the rescue comes the kuhl kuler website, http://kuler.adobe.com/ that helps us all, skilled and neophyte, get the color thing dialed in … or at least have a clue when we’re out of whack with the rest of eyes on the planet.

Enjoy … play … and use. Be kuhl, and even kuhler!

Being kuhl today is part of Randy Elrod’s WaterCoolerWednesday, join in the kuler celebration!