Invisible Gorillas

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. -- Colossians 4:2 NIV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. -- John 1:1 NIV

I've written about overcoming bad times a bunch lately, or at least that's the way it seems to me. But what about preventing some of those bad times from happening at all? We know God will send us through trying times to suit His will and to prepare us for later blessings, but are there times when we are our own worst enemy? I think there probably are based on my experience. There have certainly been times when I could very easily have chosen a less difficult path, had multiple chances to do so in fact, almost like God was giving me every chance to do so and yet I insisted on doing things the hard way.

There is a story that I read on Yahoo about the Invisible Gorilla test. They tested a group of folks by having them watch a video of some people, half dressed in black and half in white, moving around and passing balls back and forth. The test subjects were asked to count the number of passes between people. After watching the video the majority of them hadn't even noticed that a guy in a gorilla suit had moved in and out of the shot throughout the course of the video.

They then told the next group about the gorilla and played another video that had the same people passing the balls around and the gorilla moving in and out but also had other characters moving in and out. Everyone in this group noticed the gorilla, but about the same percentage as in the first test missed the other characters moving about in the video.

The conclusion is that it is hard for humans to split their focus and even when they manage to split it when they know to expect something else, we still can't further split our focus away from the task in front of us. So the trick, it seems, to avoiding the self-inflicted trials in life is put our focus where it does the most good. Our focus needs to be on God and, more specifically, on God's Word.

By putting our focus on God's instruction book for our lives, we can be prepared for the unexpected just like the folks who watched the second video. We can be prepared for the invisible gorillas when they come calling and avoid getting in our own way.