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Summer is the season of sidewalk chalk.
Both at home and at church, I have crates of sidewalk chalk to keep little fingers busy and to share the Good News through color.
Yellow. God is holy, and He made everything.
Black. We sinned and disobeyed God, separating ourselves from him forever.
Red. He loved us so much, He sent His only Son to shed His blood and die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin.
White. His sacrifice brought light to our darkness. He did not stay dead but was raised again to open the door to eternal life for everyone who follows Him.
Blue. Choose to accept Him and wash your sins away.
Green. Grow closer to Him.
Children all love color. The little one at my house loves to use the chalk to “paint” my toenails and hers. She wants to wear the beauty as much as possible.
Older ones in our neighborhood color pictures on the basketball court. As we learned about Jesus calming the storm, I instructed them to draw storms. There were many tornadoes and a lot of lightning. Color flew everywhere.
One group of girls drew my attention as they drew a picture of their niece, who was 8 years old when she died in a car accident. It was a storm of another type, and they used the beauty of color to remember a beautiful child.
Sidewalk chalk tells many stories. It allows children to capture the colors of the sun, the trees, water, the sky, and flowers and use those elements of beauty to tell their stories.
The Psalmist wrote, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord…”
The Lord gives us hints and glimpses of His beauty through His creation, and it makes us long for His true beauty, like children using sidewalk chalk to replicate the colors they see in the natural world around them.
In his book, “Rembrandt is in the Wind,” pastor Russ Ramsey writes, “Beauty is what we make of goodness and truth. Beauty takes the pursuit of goodness past mere personal ethical conduct to the work of intentionally doing good to and for others. Beauty takes the pursuit of truth past the accumulation of knowledge to the proclamation and application of truth in the name of caring for others.”
Beauty is a balm for our weary souls because it is a hint and reminder of the Creator. We seek beauty when we have seen or experienced searing ugliness.
A young woman sat in my room and detailed the ugliness of abortion- the hopelessness of tiny fingers and toes that would never experience life- but then, through tears, she smiled and recounted the birth of her second child and how she clung to the beauty of those perfectly pink fingers and toes.
“Those little fingers wrapped around mine,” she said.
Beauty brought healing because it is an echo of the goodness and truth of Jesus Christ.
Little fingers communicate beauty through the medium of sidewalk chalk. What will you use to reflect the beauty of Christ to a hurting world this week?
Sarah Dixon Young 