Early in the morning on the first Saturday in January, I again found myself out in 20-degree weather, standing in Piedmont Park in Atlanta at 7 am. I had given in to the peer pressure of my good friends to sign up for a new Atlanta Track Club race, the Polar Opposite.
These same friends and I have run and walked the well-known Peachtree Road Race 10K every July 4th for the last twenty plus years. That race is characterized by the infamous Georgia heat and humidity and by the huge crowds that participate and line the street to cheer.
The Track club folks came up with the idea of doing the opposite of that — running the course in the other direction in the middle of the winter and limiting it to only around 5,000 people. So we went down the hills we usually run up and we were freezing instead of sweating.
Once we got moving, the cold wasn’t bad and it made for a more enjoyable run. I put in my earbuds and paced myself.
As I walked and jogged past the familiar landmarks along Peachtree Road, I thought about how I need to sometimes view life from a different perspective. My same old ways of thinking and just plain living can get boring and keep me in a box.
I was reminded of an astounding art show my son Adam and I visited during our trip to Venice in April of 2023. We took a daytrip to Murano Island, home to the famous Venetian glass blowing and glass museum. In addition to the amazing examples of historic glasswork, the museum was featuring an exhibit by an artist named Simon Berger, called Shattered Glass.
Don’t ask me how he does it, but Berger is able to create art from breaking glass in huge cubes. When I first walked into the exhibit, I thought that he had made abstract art from the cracks and lines inside the cubes, which was cool in itself. But when I turned and looked a certain way at the blocks of glass, I was stunned to see faces in them.
One view of Berger’s work showed only broken glass, but seen from a slightly different angle, a powerful lion appeared.
On that beautiful sunny day at Murano Island and again on the sunny but cold Atlanta morning, I was reminded how my perspective makes the difference in whether I see my experiences in a positive or negative light.
Are the broken parts of me just trash, like shattered glass, or could there be something beautiful to come out of them?
I have been reading this January from Kelly Minter’s excellent devotional, The Blessed Life, based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Throughout the passage in Matthew 5, Jesus tells us to look at life not through the lens of the establishment, but through new eyes. In Jesus’ upside-down vantage point, we should rejoice, not be sad, if we find ourselves poor in spirit, mourning, persecuted, or insulted for being his followers. Going through trials puts us in a position to receive God’s comfort and grace.
Just as I saw the change in the cubes of glass, I’m challenging myself this year to get out of my comfort zone and try out different views. This might mean going on a new route for a walk or reading a book that is not my usual choice. It could mean trying a new recipe or moving around the furniture in my house.
It could also mean that I make an effort to listen to those with political or religious opinions dissimilar to mine, or to put myself into the shoes of those struggling with addiction or homelessness — or who just grate on my nerves.
I pray that viewing life through a slightly different angle will enable me to see my own struggles through Jesus’ lens — as opportunities to receive His grace and care for me.
Under the Magnolia Tree 