The Christian Colors

After a refreshing break from the blogging world, I have decided to let you all know what I have been doing. In the past three weeks I have changed jobs. I now work at a local Sherwin-Williams paint store. It has amazed me how God has moved through this whole situation.

The Humane Society was a very good first job for me. It required me to have a quick, expedient work ethic, and to have a pleasant attitude towards the public at all times, no matter how irate whoever you are speaking with is. All these traits are so necessary to a job well done at Sherwin-Williams, it now seems that, looking back on everything, I was being prepared for this job while working at the Humane Society.

My job at Sherwin-Williams came to me quite by surprise. I was happy with my job at the Humane Society, and wasn't looking for a job elsewhere. A friend of mine told me about an opening at Sherwin-Williams, and said I should apply if I was interested. At the time, I wasn't. I prayed about it, however, and felt Gods leading to pursue the job further. I applied, and in the end, as you know, was eventually hired.

As I was being trained, I noticed how much color matching we have to do. People bring in an item that has a color they want to use as a paint, and we patiently work and tweak the paint base with pigments to achieve a perfect match.

That process of color matching reminded me of the Christian life. We, as Christians, are to attempt to become a perfect match, or imitation, of Christ. We must patiently work and tweak our habits and personalities to imitate Jesus' until the world cannot tell the difference between Him and us. We don't change our habits all on our own though, we use love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance (Gal. 5:22 - 23).

Also like the color matching process, we don't start from scratch, just guessing at what to do, in our Christian lives. At the store, we use color cards and a color matching computer. In life, Christians use, first and foremost, the Bible, and the writings and experience of other more mature Christians.

And finally, in the same way the color doesn't matter until the paint is well shaken and put upon wall, our Christ-like habits don't do us any good until they are tested and put into practice every day.

Written by: Zachary J.