It's Good to be Green

I have a few Bibles. Okay, so I have a few more than a few but they’re all different versions so that’s okay, right? Anyway, the one I use the most currently is my NIV/The Message Parallel. If you haven’t seen a parallel Bible before, it’s where two different versions are on each page, parallel. Yep, makes sense. I like it because while I love the wake-me-up different-ness (yes, I’m making up words) of The Message, I always find myself having to go back to the ‘real Bible’ to find out what the same verses are there. Having them parallel makes that incredibly easy.

I was reading Romans 15 the other day and The Message version of verse 13 stuck out to me:

May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!

I like that. It’s inspiring. And a great prayer to pray for people. I especially like the ‘God of green hope’ bit.

Now, personally, I have no idea where the green description comes from. None of the other versions I looked up had any colours described but for some reason The Message wanted it in there. 

Look up the word ‘green’ in a dictionary and there are lots of meanings.

The colour, obviously. Or that a person is feeling sick. Or that an area is designated for plants and growth. That something is full of plants, like a green salad. Or that something is unripe. And a bunch of other variations of those.

It can also mean inexperienced or naïve, which is the one that immediately came to mind when I read the Romans verse.

We all know someone who’s been ‘green’. If not personally, in a movie or something. That one person who turns up all excited while the rest of you are standing around smirking. Give it a week, kid…

Green hope. Inexperienced hope. Naïve hope.

Sometimes hope involves us being green. Ignoring reality and focusing instead on what could be. The best possibly scenario. Before we get bogged down and discouraged and learn just how impossibly unlikely what we’re hoping for is.

I don’t know about you but my hope tends to feel a little discouraged at times. Usually when I’m focussing on all the reasons something is never going to happen. My hope is strongest when I ignore reality and reason and focus instead on the God who said he could do anything. The God of the impossible. I say, ‘so what?’ to the voices in my head telling me to come back to the real world and cling instead to the God of green hope. It's not always an easy thing to do. Usually quite the opposite. But it's then that hope rises.

So, here’s what I’m praying for you. That the God of green hope would fill you today with joy and peace so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, would brim over with hope.

And that you’d have the courage to be green.