Look up

Since moving last June, I've taken the same commute route every day. I ride the 2/3 train downtown to Times Square, then transfer to the 7 train to Grand Central. When I exit the train station on 42nd St, I'm in the midst of one of Manhattan's most crowded morning streets. The view looks something like this:




Busy New York street, commuters, cabs, a Citi Bank, a shoe store. An all-around bustling, gray city view...just your run of the mill midtown scene.

But one day, I happened to look up.

And I saw this:

The Chrysler Building. One of the tallest buildings in the city. Arguably the finest, most beautiful piece of New York City architecture in existence, and certainly my favorite building dotting the Manhattan skyline.

From the ground, it looks mundane. Boring. Unexciting. Gray. So much so that I, even knowing exactly where the Chrysler Building is in the city, did not put two and two together that it was the building I passed every single morning for a year.

That is, until I looked up.

Horizontally, it appeared to be nothing worth noticing. In fact, I frequently complain about my commute and the crowds and the people that surround me. I am one of many cattle herding through the subway system and along the sidewalk. There are no trees to be seen at any point in my morning trek. It's long and tiring. It has never seemed to be noteworthy in any way, shape or form.

But once I shifted my view vertically, I saw that I was beholding a masterpiece. I saw that things were not as they originally seemed. I saw that the drab, unimpressive ground-level exterior was the base for the majestic, glittering structure that makes my heart sing.

I needed to be reminded to look up. I needed something to help me remember that, in life, things are not always as they seem. That the very thing I'm complaining about today could turn into something beautiful tomorrow. That, in the midst of the mundane, something new is just waiting to be seen. That the view from down here and the view from up there are never the same.

But we have to look up.

"Then the word of the Lord came to him: 'This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.' He took him outside and said,

Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.

Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."
Genesis 15:4-6