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Praying with colors on the journey

Lynne Baab • Tuesday January 6 2026

Praying with colors on the journey

As a new year begins, I’m thinking about colors. I’m thinking about:

  • the cloudy dark gray of sad things
  • the fierce red of my anger about the injustices I see far too often
  • the many greens of trees, even in winter, and bright red and yellow berries

January 6 was Epiphany, when we celebrate the coming of the Wise Men to the stable, following a star. “Epiphany” means revelation — the revelation of Jesus’s coming for the sake of the Gentiles as well as the Jews. The whole season of Epiphany, which lasts until Ash Wednesday (February 18 this year), is a season of light. Without light we wouldn’t see. And light bouncing off objects brings us color.

More than a decade ago, I conducted interviews in several cities about how congregations engaged with artists and the arts. In one church in Melbourne, Australia, a woman told me about a class she led. She had collected dozens of scarves and pieces of fabric in every color imaginable. She invited participants to think of praises and intercessions, then pick colors that represented those prayers. Participants could wave the scarf, dance with it, drape it over their shoulders or lap. These movements with the colors, she suggested, could be viewed as prayer.

Today, I’m inviting you to use colors for prayer. To get a variety of colors as options, you might use a set of colored markers, a box of thread or yarn, your favorite clothes, or a color wheel (look here for a pretty one). You might look around your house or at neighbors' gardens on a walk. Maybe stand in the flower section of a grocery store and look at the variety of colors.

Then, with a range of colors in mind, look back on last year, identifying one or two highlights. What color comes to mind as you think of those blessings? Hold that color in your hand or in your mind and offer it to God in thanks.

Continue to look back on last year and identify one or two lowlights. See if you can connect a color to those events. Sit with that color for a minute and experience your sadness, anger, or grief about what happened. Offer those emotions to God.

Repeat these two steps as often as you like.

As you look forward to this coming year, pick a color that represents your hopes for the year. Pray about the ways you’d like to experience God’s presence with you this year in ways that resonate with that color.

You may want to bring to mind specific upcoming events and pray about each one using a color that captures your hope for the event.

After looking back and looking forward, sit in the presence of God with the color wheel in mind or in your sight. What colors express what you’re feeling right now?

Next, turn your attention to the beauty of life that gives us such solace in hard times. Perhaps you want to think about the greens of trees or the pinks, reds, yellows, and purples of flowers. Maybe the blue of water comes to mind — steel blue, navy blue, turquoise blue, or greenish blue — depending on the location and color of the sky. Maybe you’ll think of a child’s or grandchild’s eyes or ripe, fresh fruit.

If you’re really getting into this, you might want to think about the color of the love you feel for people who brighten your life or the color of kindness you admire. We have journeyed from one year into another, and Jesus will walk with us every day of this coming year. Perhaps holding a specific color in mind will help you be more aware of his presence. Perhaps a color will help you rely on the Holy Spirit for comfort, guidance, and power. Colors are beautiful, and all beauty comes to us from the Maker of beauty.

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies.
Christ, our Lord, to you we raise
this, our hymn of grateful praise.
—Folliott Sandford Pierpoint (1864)

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Illustration by Dave Baab: Sunset at Rockaway Beach, California.

I wrote about learning to pray with colors here.



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