Orange as a colour is not mentioned in the Bible – neither are the fruit! The sweet orange comes from China. The Portugese probably were responsible for introducing the fruit to Europe. The colour is named after the fruit, and the first recorded use of orange as a colour name in English was in 1512, so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t get a mention in the Bible. Similarly with yellow,  scriptures tend to describe things as the colour of sulphur or other yellow things such as gemstones, natural gum, bronze or gold, rather than naming the colour.  The word for yellow/blond hair means ‘gleaming’.

Of course the history of colour names is all wrapped up with the history of the objects which bear those colours – and that is all part of the richness of language. I love the fact that there are hundreds (or more) names for colours in art shops and interior paint stores. It certainly helps to write more interesting poetry! I was delighted to discover an old book called ‘Werner’s nomenclature of colours’ (with additions by the flower painter Patrick Syme 1814) which compares colours to where you find them – The different yellows are named and referenced by where you’d find it in nature – animal, vegetable or mineral -  primroses, saffron, lemons, canaries, the larva of the large Water Beetle, the wings of goldfinches, and various gemstones and gallstones!  It all encourages me to do that mindful practice – to ‘stop and stare’ at every little thing, and construct my own living rainbow like I might have done as a child cutting out pictures from magazines for a collage or mosaic. To take in the vast array of colours we are blessed with in the natural world should move us to worship – although the modern tendency is to move us to grab our camera or phone to ‘capture’ what is there rather than relishing it in the moment and praising the God who shows a little more of himself in every new hue we discover.

Take a while to look into this picture of a vine below.
Just look, don’t analyse.  What do you see?
See the light not just the structures.
See the different shades of green, yellow, orange, brown, or any others.
And spend a little time just ‘abiding’ in the vine and being part of the picture.
Perhaps you also see the form of a crucified man, holding out his life to you…

I’m staring at a lovely ripening mango – and can smell it too – and musing on the colours of the skin. It displays a little part of the rainbow as the reds shift through orange and yellow to green. In places it seems all those colours are present at once, recalling a Pointillist work of art with spots of different hue on the skin playing tricks on my eyes whilst my brain puts them together to create the glowing image of the fruit in my mind – which in turn triggers the saliva glands in my mouth!!

The orange-yellow flesh inside glows with sweet sunshine as if the warmth of the tropics has been concentrated, packed into a living parcel and flown across the world to bless my senses with its delectable sight, smell, and taste. How would you describe the taste of a mango? Edible sunshine? In a sense it actually is just that. 

The energy of the sun’s rays has been captured by the mango leaves; the chlorophyll – that amazing green catalyst molecule – has married water and carbon dioxide and bonded them with sunlight-power to create sugar (sent to the developing fruit to make mango juice) and at the same time producing that other life-giving molecule: oxygen.  It’s schoolgirl biochemistry but I still find it an absolutely mind-blowing process, brimming with the wisdom of God in action. For me green is so very much the colour of the life-giving Spirit of God – and yet in a complimentary way to red, which I explored in my previous Part 2 article.


The greening of the Spirit
And so green and red, complimentary colours in the paint box, both speak of life in different ways.  How fitting that in different traditions of the church these colours are both used liturgically for the feast of Pentecost. See what we can learn from each other!

Red – the colour of tongues of fire, sacrifice and martyrdom – drapes our Anglican church communion table on Pentecost Sunday.  But when I lived in Russia we visited a Cathedral on the eve of Orthodox Pentecost to find the whole place decked in green, and living green at that, with fresh birch branches about all the doors and windows, and mown grass strewn all over the floor – it smelled like a newly cut lawn.

In the Bible the greening of the desert is one of the most powerful images of the life of God returning to a dried-up land and a parched people.  Isaiah 35.1 ‘Let the wilderness and desert be glad. Let the arid rift valley rejoice and bloom like a lily.’ 
Have you ever seen one of those time lapse films of what happens when the rains come to arid places? Within a few days dormant seeds come to life and rapidly shoot, spread and bloom while the water is available in order to set seed for the next generation of plants.


It’s been recently confirmed that our family will be moving with my husband’s job to live in Oman so I’m hoping to see something of that spectacle first hand. At least the experience will make me utterly more appreciative of “England’s green and pleasant land” (where everyone complains about the weather) even knowing that the Irish have a thousand more shades of green than we do – that come with even more wet days.  I will also miss the northern passing of seasons – another of God’s blessings – where each winter is just long enough to really make me appreciate the fresh green growth of Spring;

Apologies to antipodians who celebrate Easter in the Autumn, and those of you in the tropics who never get a winter, but I do pray that as the days lengthen and the sun’s heat gathers strength the firey sunrise will remind you of the risen Jesus, his golden light will power you up, and that green shoots of renewal will sprout as you put your roots into Him.

The Lord is my sun and my shield. (Psalm 84.11)

Be like ‘a tree planted by flowing streams;
it yields its fruit at the proper time,
and its leaves never fall off.                        Psalm 1. 3


Luke 11.11-13
What father among you, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Ask for an egg!!
Enjoy looking forward to a colourful Easter and a powerful Pentecost.

See Part 1 “Let there be Light” – Reflections on Light, Color & Our Relationship with God by Ros Yates  See Part 2 “Let there be Light” – Part 2: Color Red by Ros Yates

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Ros Yates is a member of the Antioch ecumenical Christian community in London. She has been painting and drawing from an early age. Having studied Biology and Theology she is now an ordained Deacon in the Church of England, a self-taught artist, and mother of four children.  Not surprising then that themes of creativity, spirituality and the natural world are constantly interwoven in her life and art.