What Do You See?

By Reverend Cortney Dale

When I was in second grade, my mother signed me up for an after-school art class. Once a week, about six of us would meet in Miss Amanda’s studio to learn about how to carefully paint and draw still lifes, portraits and landscapes. She would also take time to show us the greats: da Vinci, Michelangelo and Monet became household names. One day she held up her art textbook and showed us George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

It’s an iconic painting: a sunny grassy area with the men holding pipes and the women in fashionable bustles holding umbrellas. Miss Amanda carefully explained, “The actual painting is much bigger. It’s as big as this wall! And when you see it up close, it’s really made of millions of little dots and you can’t tell what it is until you step back.”

I was enchanted. Almost ten years later, I was able to travel to Chicago myself and see the Seurat painting in real life at the Chicago Art Institute. Just like Miss Amanda had described, the painting is taller than most adults and as wide as a classroom wall. Up close I could only make out blue, green and brown dots that seemed randomly assembled. Perhaps there were some darker and lighter areas, but there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to these dots. But with just a few steps backward and the painting became clear: the women’s dresses, the sunny grass.

The thing is, I think life works like pointillism a lot. In the trenches of day to day living, life doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. I can complain about things seeming chaotic and boring in the same breath.

This blue dot, I overslept and was almost late for an appointment. That green spot over there was a pleasant evening sitting on the porch and chatting with a friend. In this little red point over here, I was annoyed at being stuck in construction traffic on 741 again.

Some of the bigger dots in the painting are more significant events—baptizing a newborn baby and seeing the glow on his parents’ faces, comforting a recent widow as she says goodbye to her lifelong partner, a vacation that came at just the right time, a car accident that came at just the wrong one.

And it’s important for us to be in all of those dots, to experience the moments of life as they’re happening with the people we care about. The decisions we make in those little dots can make a big difference in our lives and the lives of those around us.

But I’m also always on the lookout for those rare but valuable days when I’m able to take a few steps back to examine the master artist at work.

In Luke 12, Jesus encourages his followers to “consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying.” (NRSV)

I don’t know much about how the ultimate painting of our lives will look, but I know when I ‘consider the lilies’ I’m able to recognize the blessings that would otherwise be blurred and misunderstood.

Perspective can be the difference between seeing points, and seeing a painting.

When you take a step back and look at the points in your life, what image do you see on the master artist’s canvas?