It’s All Perspective
For more than thirty years I’ve lived about three miles from the closest Amish farm and five miles from the Lancaster County line. For a time I had a young woman help with the house (so I could write). Her parents were Old Order Amish and she dressed Plain, though she told me she was no longer Amish herself.
“I believe in salvation by grace,” she said, a concept I couldn’t argue with given Eph. 2:8,9.
I noticed that though Sally dressed in the traditional Amish style, the colors she wore were not traditional. She’d wear a brown dress with a beige apron or a navy dress with a light blue apron. I knew she’d never wear red, one of my favorite colors, because it would be seen as too bold, maybe even the color of a fallen woman–which I most definitely am not in spite of wearing red as I write this.
Still I asked, “Would you ever wear yellow or pink?” They are, after all, soft colors, gentle colors, not brassy or overwhelming.
“Oh, no,” she said. “They would draw too much attention to me, and I’d never want that.”
I had to smile to myself at her answer. Yellow and pink might draw attention to her, but if I followed her fashion lead and dressed Plain, in my circles I’d definitely be doing the very thing she felt she mustn’t be doing–drawing attention to myself. It’s all perspective.
