What Can Brown Do For You?

I'm pretty low maintenance when it comes to classroom expenditures. Each new school year, I have two things on my supply list: four big boxes of Crayola Markers and five hundred sheets of white card stock paper. Four times a year we decorate one of the walls with artwork and after each test, we make cards for those who are grieving or hurting or deserving congratulations. The markers get used up over the span of the ten months we are in business and they help us tell the story of Jesus and His love in what we believe is a unique manner.

But that's not all we use the markers for. We take at least three quizzes per week over readings in the Gospels as well as notes we have transcribed. I have the students grade their own quizzes for several reasons. One is that we use it as review and discussion time. The second reason is that often, the kids add prayer requests which are personal in nature. To discourage cheating, we all use markers to do the grading. That's where the pictures at the top come into play. I've noticed over the years that there is one color that is rarely used when we make cards or do our family Coat Of Arms for the wall- brown. It's a somber shade, not stark enough for the messages of mourning but not bright enough for the cheerfulness which often we seek to convey. So as you can see, we put the lonely and often forsaken brown Crayola Markers in a shoe box until they are distributed in the marking part of our daily routine. Not every marker is up to the task but someone has to do the dirty work. Brown is up to the task.

My friend, Al, hails from the same hometown in Nebraska as I do. For decades, Al has worked for UPS, surviving the spectrum of weather that defines the Cornhusker State. For a number of years, UPS advertised with the slogan What Can Brown Do You You? I thought it was a brilliant and catchy phrase.... although I've never sought Al's opinion. But the trucks are brown and the drivers' uniforms are brown so it just seemed logical to me. Brown to me connotes solid and dependable. Red is flashy, purple is animated, blue is my favorite color, yellow is sunny, and green is the color of life. Brown is none of those things but you can bet brown won't desert you when all the bright shades have flown away. (I fell like I'm channeling an ABBA song!) You get the point..... I hope.

In life, most of want to be the bright hues. We long to be seen as more outstanding, more vibrant, more lively and I think we all have areas where we shine. But there are parts of us where we long to blend in, be unseen, stand off stage. No one has the full complement of physical or artistic or scholastic or social gifts- we would be hard to live with if we did. Sometimes, we get jealous of those who might radiate more light than we do. Spiritually, it's no different. Paul talked in Romans and 1st Corinthians about how believers aren't each blessed with identical gifts and some might seem more important than others. Having a gift we hold to be less desirable doesn't make us a second class Christian any more than saying a brown marker is less important than his/her seven counterparts. Without the browns, how would I know how my students fared in their quiz over the Prodigal Son or the Persistent Widow? The browns sometimes deliver bad news about the accuracy of a teenager's reading aptitude that day but also the joy of a perfect score! Brown's really good at that. That's what brown can do for me.

Applicable quotes of the day:“
# 1: "The only color I don’t have is navy brown.”
 Yogi Berra
# 2: “I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.” 
Winston Churchill

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail  me at steve@hawleybooks.com