Songfacts®:

• On this track from Dolly Parton's hit crossover album, Here You Come Again, the country singer describes the array of colors found in everyday life, from a golden ray of sunlight to the grayness in an old man's hair. She realizes she can sense God's presence in the beauty of his creation, which she calls "God's coloring book."
• Here You Come Again was Parton's first album to garner platinum certification (a million sales) and her first to enter the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart. It was also her second consecutive #1 album on the country tally.
• Charley Pride and Parton sang this as a duet on Pride's 2006 album, Pride & Joy: A Gospel Collection. Pride had thought about contacting her for permission to record the tune but abandoned the idea. His wife, Rozene, took matters into her own hands and called Parton herself. Parton was already a big fan of Pride's (she recorded his hit "Just Between You And Me" early in her career) and jumped at the chance for him to cover one of her songs – as long as she got to sing it with him.
• Chance the Rapper released the gospel-themed mixtape Coloring Book in 2016, which was possibly inspired by the Pride/Parton duet.
• This was on of several Parton tunes that Irish singer Margo O'Donnell covered on her 1999 album, The Highway of My Life. The track features vocals from Parton.
• Growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, Dolly was a child of nature. She loved to chase butterflies through the woods and write songs underneath the trees, listening for God's voice through the wind. As an adult, she still looks to nature as a way to communicate with her maker. "'God's Coloring Book' expresses my spirituality and explains my connection with God," she explained in her 2020 book, Songteller. "When I see nature's colors, that's when I am closest to Him. I think that I am at my best when I write songs that are connected to God, as I see Him."