Violet — The Deep Expectant Light

Violet is scattered most by Earth’s atmosphere, yet the cones that filter light in the human eye are not sensitive enough to fully perceive it. What is really a vibrant violet appears in the lens of the human eye as a blue sky. Advent hope is like the violet skies that we cannot see with the naked eye but that we can imagine through the eyes of faith.  God’s promises shimmer at the edges of our awareness, just beyond the range of what we can see or name. 

 

Violet invites us to trust that what is invisible can still be true. The deeper hues of faith remind us that waiting is not emptiness. The violet blue of advent stretches us toward what we cannot fully perceive. The extra effort we make in our looking is a humbling experience.  

When we gaze into the long blue horizon and find ourselves unable to see the color that faith insists is really there, advent teaches us to look, not with our eyes, but with our hearts. There, we sense the pulse of promise, subtle yet constant, echoing from creation’s first dawn to Bethlehem’s sky, scattered in a violet-blue in all the directions of our small lives. Look and see what the bluest sky heralds, what purer light may yet appear.