In the summer of 1990 Binney & Smith, the makers of Crayola crayons, retired eight colors from their 64 crayon box and replaced them with eight brighter, bolder colors. The colors inducted in the Crayola Hall of Fame include raw umber, maize, lemon yellow, blue gray, violet blue, green blue, orange red and orange yellow. The new shades introduced include such postmodern colors as Cerulean, Vivid Tangerine, Royal Purple, Teal Blue, Fuchsia, Jungle Green, Dandelion, and Wild Strawberry.

The reaction on the part of adults to the change was swift, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, always objecting. The "Save Raw Umber Society" gathered signatures. A Virginia woman started the National Campaign to Save Lemon Yellow. The Raw Umber and Maize Preservation Society boasts the acronym RUMPS. Pastors have delivered sermons calling for letter writing campaigns against the change.

The most intelligent responses came from kids. One young boy wondered why the company simply didn't make a box of 72 crayons instead of 64. And Ebony Faison wrote to Crayola makers and asked for help. "Raw umber is the color of me. Whenever I draw me, I use raw umber. What color should I color now?"

But adults seem to be much more concerned than the children. It is as if the validity of treasured childhood memories depends upon these rainbow hues never changing. Our fears of adult life, of the decisions we must make, the roads we must follow or avoid, do not depend on the world remaining the same as we have always known it.

Don't wake Jesus up! This is not the way for the church to recover its identity as a "peculiar people." The Spirit of God reaches every generation differently, and God's spirit can use the more postmodern colors of Vivid Tangerine as easily as the more modern look of Raw Umber. We must trust that God is with us in the colors of all the seasons of our lives.