endurance – The Faith Cafe

Mallard duck. Image by Ralphs_Fotos from Pixabay

Among the most spectacular aspects of nature for me are its colours.

I’m continually wowed by the vivid colours found in nature, such as the brilliant red plumage of the Northern cardinal.

The cardinal’s red feathers, which come courtesy of pigments, look the same when viewed from any angle. But there’s another source of colour in nature that is even more mesmerizing:

Iridescence.

With iridescence, the hue of something changes when seen from different angles. You’ve probably experienced this shimmery optical phenomenon yourself when looking at certain insects, butterflies, birds, or even soap bubbles.

A good example of iridescence is the head of the mallard, a common duck found in the northern hemisphere. Its head appears to be a bright emerald green at first, but if you shift your angle of observation, it can appear green-gold, blue, or indigo.

It all depends on your perspective.

Maybe there’s a little lesson here for us.

If we shift our perspective about our own situations, we can see beauty that we didn’t know was there.

Have you ever run a relay race?

If you have, you’ll know that how well your team passes the baton matters just as much as how fast you all run.

I participated in a few relay races during high school when I was on the track team, and learned that there’s a knack to it.

When passing the baton to your teammate, you have to make sure that they’re up to speed first: at a sprint. You can’t hand off the baton at a standstill or even at a jog or your team will fall behind.

Therefore, we were taught a method to use at track meets when coming up behind the next runner on our team. We would shout out the name of our particular school, then say, “Go!”

Our next runner would immediately start sprinting with one hand behind them, ready to grab the baton in the passing zone. They wouldn’t look back at us, but simply keep running and power forward once we’d put the baton in their hand.

I think some these tips can apply to how we “pass the baton” to the next generation of believers in our spiritual race.

The Faith Cafe

Tag: endurance

Shift Your Perspective

How To Pass The Baton