Yesterday I got 1200 pageviews in one day on my guitar lesson website.  At the same time, I got 2300 video views in one day on YouTube.  Since December, people have sent me donations, hand made guitar pedals, and asked me to put out DVD lessons for them to buy.  I’ve had at least 3 people buy a guitar amp, and one person buy a guitar after watching my videos.  Two other people bought the same pedals I use. 

What’s even more surprising?  3 months ago, I hadn’t even thought about doing my first lesson.

Hidden In Plain Sight

The first recorded role of God is that of a creator.  An artist.  An infinite being with infinite creativity.  The best part?  When Jesus left this earth, He told us that we’d have that same creative force given to us in the Holy Spirit.

I remember watching a show about how easily our brains can be fooled into completely ignoring something if we’re given something else to focus on.  There was a group of about 10-15 people put in a room in front of a big TV.  The were told to watch the basketball players with certain colored jerseys on, and count how many times they passed the ball.  When the video started, 10 players came into view.  Half had on one color jersey, the rest had on the color that the group was supposed to watch.

They ran a tight figure 8 type pattern in a very small amount of space in front of the camera, passing the ball.  The people in the room watched very intently.  Halfway into the video, a mascot wearing a head-to-toe gorilla costume walked into the camera shot, stood right behind the players, and then walked out.  Oddly no one seemed to notice.

When the video concluded, the host of the show polled the participants to see how many people got the right number of passes.  Most were within 1 or 2 of the correct answer.  Then he asked if anyone saw something unusual about the video, and nobody remembered anything of the sort.  So he asked them to watch it again, this time without paying attention to the basketball, but just to watch the whole scene.  When the man in the gorilla suit came out, people’s reactions were of disbelief.  In their mind, there was no way that they could have missed that.  But they did.  Because they were focused on something else.

So I sat on my couch and laughed at all the dimwits who couldn’t even see a man in a gorilla costume walk across the screen.  Then the host of the show looked right at the camera and told me and everyone else watching the show that we shouldn’t be so amused.  He then showed in slow motion 4 or 5 clips from the past half hour of the show, where the same man, in the same gorilla costume had interrupted the shot during other segments of the show.  But because we, the viewing audience were so focused on the characters in the clip, we missed it just like the people watching the basketball video.

What’s the point?

The point of this series of posts is to explore how much we need to be able to hear God in order to live out the fullness of our days here on earth.  Our minds are not as sharp as we’d like to think.  There are parts of the big picture of our lives that we will surely miss without his help.  There are ideas hidden in plain sight that God has set before us that we will never see.  Missing those ideas could cost some people millions of dollars.  Even more important?  Missing those ideas could cost some a lot of happiness and fulfillment.

 

Next time I’ll take a look at a man who’s once-in-a-lifetime idea made him one of the most envied men in his field.