The Color of Love

A few years ago, at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, I marched through my local grocery store’s automatic doors. Get tea. Maybe get some flowers. Throw it all in the car. Get to church. Set out the china. Go pick up the girls.

My list of things to get done in the next hour and a half chanted through my mind as I pivoted to the deli section at the front of the store. It was festooned with bright flowers and roses in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. I grimaced at the prices. No way. I’ve already spent enough on this weekend.

On this particular Valentine’s Day weekend, the discipleship ministry Bright Lights was hosting a Radiant Purity Conference via Zoom for young ladies. To me, this conference was a good opportunity for the teen girls in my church to get spiritual encouragement. On Friday night, the girls and I watched a couple of sessions at church. Now we would spend our entire Saturday watching the rest of the sessions.

For this event, I had not put much effort into the planning and set up. Thankfully, the girls were satisfied with on-sale frozen pizzas for Friday supper. But it was Valentine’s weekend, after all. Setting out my nice china, teacups, and some blueberry scones seemed a good way to make our early Saturday morning start special.

It also occurred to me that getting flowers would be a nice touch—that is, until the price drove me and my pocketbook away. Abandoning the flowers, I simply grabbed some boxes of tea and went to a self-checkout station. Yet my finger hovered over the start scanning button. Hadn’t I told the Lord years ago that my money belonged to Him—that He could do whatever He wanted with it? And somehow, in my spirit, I knew the Lord wanted me to get those flowers, even if it stretched my budget.

White, red, yellow, and pink roses created a beautiful bucket bouquet. Should I get each girl a different color? I contemplated the message of the flowers. I know yellow is for friendship. Red is for passion. White is for purity. I don’t know what pink is for.

Well, this is a purity conference after all. White seemed to be the logical, symbolic choice. I reached for the white, then pulled my hand back. I felt pressed in my spirit to get red roses—all red. But I argued, Red is for passion. Won’t that make the girls think about romance? That’s the opposite of what we are going for! This conference was about focusing on serving the Lord and trusting Him to love and satisfy us. I stood there with my precious seconds ticking away as I picked up several different colors. Finally, I put them back, grabbed three red roses, and marched back to the self-checkout to reluctantly pay the bill.

As I slid into my car and placed the roses on the passenger seat, I asked the Lord, “Why red roses? They symbolize passion and romance.”

God answered, speaking directly to my spirit:

“Because I have a passionate love for them.”

I stopped and gripped the steering wheel. The Lord continued,

“My love for those girls is so passionate that I bled and died for them. Red is the color of My blood that I shed for them.”

I sat still for a moment. Then I nodded, turned on the car, and headed to the church.

“It’s so pretty!” one girl exclaimed.

“I’ve never used china like this before,” another said as her hands hovered over a delicate teacup. Cream-colored roses with green vines looped around the porcelain.

“And look at the roses!” the third one said as she picked up the red rose lying across the top of her tea setting.

Once we sat down, I told the girls that their red roses were not from me—they were from the Lord. He told me to get them that day, and He wanted them to be red to symbolize His passionate love for them.

“Ah, red—like His blood!” the youngest girl interjected.

I smiled. “Yes—exactly.”

The girls listened with serious expressions as I told the story of the roses and what God told me. As we talked, they stroked the petals and continuously lifted the roses to smell them.

We then proceeded to watch several sessions that talked about relationships with boys, relationships with parents, and most importantly, our relationship with God. The last session of the day was Delighting in Jesus, Your Heavenly Prince. It included a chalk talk in which the speaker used chalks to draw a beautiful landscape while other girls gave testimonies or the speaker made a certain point. When the landscape was done, she would flip a backlight, and a hidden picture would appear.

It was a rose.

A red rose.

“It’s a rose!” one girl exclaimed.

Another turned and pointed at me. “That’s why you—”

“No, she’s never seen this before! She didn’t know either!” the third girl interrupted. She stared at the picture and then looked back across the table at me. She slapped the table. “That’s why God had you get red roses!”

I nodded with my mouth hanging open, too shocked to speak myself. My heart swelled, and tears came to my eyes. I blinked and swallowed hard, trying to contain my emotion.

Here we were, just three girls and a twenty-something single in a small church in the-middle-of-nowhere Missouri. To anyone looking in, there would be nothing to make this group stand out. These teenage girls had each experienced the physical or emotional abandonment of at least one parent. They did not have spiritual support at home or school. They were not planning to be missionaries or major Christian leaders. But God saw them. He saw them. And He cared enough to make sure these girls knew He saw them and loved them passionately.

At least one girl froze her rose when she got home. It was a gift to be treasured and preserved. Yet I knew that one day the rose itself would disintegrate. It is God’s love that never will. No matter where we went—no matter what we faced, I knew that we would carry the memory of those roses with us. We would remember the color of love.

Copyright © 2025 by Carmen Dillon. All rights reserved.

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