Pantone’s color of the year is Peach Fuzz (Pantone 13-1023). Benjamin Moore’s paint color of the year is Blue Nova 825 and Behr went with Cracked Pepper PPU18-10. Not to be outdone, BRIDES named Marseille Bleu as its wedding color of the year. I wonder if, as children, these color gurus agonized over their box of Crayola crayons, deciding between blue violet, cerulean, sky blue, indigo, midnight blue or cadet blue crayon.

When I admired a friend's purple sweater this week, I found out that the Episcopal church has its own colors of the year, the Liturgical Year, that is—white, purple, violet, red and green. White, the color of Jesus’ burial garments, is for Easter and Christmas; purple/violet is for Advent (or royal—not midnight or cadet—blue) and Lent (or unbleached linen); red is used in Holy Week and the Day of Pentecost; and green is used during Epiphany and the “Ordinary Time” after Pentecost.

Long before any liturgical year, God’s people had their hands full with skeins of blue and purple and scarlet yarn, and with fine twined linen and goats’ hair to make God a sanctuary, where he could dwell in their midst (See Exodus 24:4–8).

This tabernacle had pillars of acacia wood overlaid with gold, bases of silver and a tent covering of ram skins dyed red. High priestly garments were a coat of checkered work of sardius, topaz, carbuncle, emerald, sapphire, diamonds, jacinth, agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx and jasper. Imagine these precious stones catching the candlelight and the holy place explodes in color.

And it was all temporary, all a copy of the real thing, all pointing to that lasting city whose designer and builder is God. And what a city he designed—a city full of his glory, “its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” (Revelation 21:11) The city’s wall is “built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass.” The aged Apostle John described the foundations of the wall adorned with jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth and amethyst. Each of its twelve gates were made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold. It's a repeat of the copy, but more. Instead of reflecting candlelight or sunlight or moonlight, these precious stones reflect Light from Light, true God from true God.

There’s another color at play in all this. It’s God's color of eternity—blood red. We see Moses, painting the book of the law, the tent, the vessels used in worship, even the people in swatches of blood red mixed with water, scarlet wool and hyssop (Hebrews 9:19-21). The blood red dripping down and staining everything it covered.

Then we see Jesus not painting with blood red but pouring out his own blood, red and dripping down the cross. Blood red, atoning blood that removed sin’s stains once for all for sinners, for all eternity. Wrote English poet and hymnwriter William Cowper in his hymn, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”:

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains:
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

Just call my color washed-in-blood red.