So, I have to admit it…I see things everywhere. Apparently, though, according to the American Psychological Association, this is not a problem; it is only a problem if I hear things, but that is a whole other post.
This being the case, you get a peek into the way I see things.
Last night, I spent the night slalom skiing, in the comfort of my living room. For Christmas, my family gave me the Wii Fit game, and it is loaded with all kinds of fun. Slalom skiing is one of multiple opportunities to look silly in your own home. However, i was determined to get my time under a minute (So close….) so, silly or not, I skied my night away. While skiing, I noticed something.
In this game you ski through “gates” which are pairs of flags, delineating the course. The game measures your time for the run, and then adds a certain amount of time for every gate that you miss. So here is what I saw. If you looked at the very next gate, you will always over compensate, and miss not only that gate, but the one following it. The trick is to watch the gate at least two moves ahead, and keep your eyes further down the run. The difficulty with this is that if you miss a gate, it draws your attention to the next one, and pulls your focus in too close, causing an avalanche of misses that continue until you can get your eyes off the disaster of the next missed gate.
Anyone else see it too?
As we begin the journey to freedom, setting our sights is crucial as we begin. What we focus on, determines the direction in which we move. If our focus is too close, we get focused on ourselves and our inabilities (or sometimes worse, our abilities). Either way we over-correct.
Look further away. Not as in tomorrow, or next week, focus higher. Look first at the active presence of the Spirit of God on the earth and in your life. Seek first His Kingdom. See that He has already finished the race and move towards Him. Don’t get your eyes trapped on the gate you just missed, your senses will begin to work against you.
Many car accidents happen when we over-correct our mistakes. The first mistake is usually not the one that crashes our car, it is the cascade of mistakes we make when we focus on ourselves and try to correct our trajectory with a limited line of sight.
You are going to miss some gates. You are going to slip off the road. But we must learn to get our eyes upward and not let these mis-steps throw off our next five turns.
So the funny part of this is that in our Wii game, Jesus is one of the characters. A kind little avatar with long hair and a beard is often seen on the sidelines, and in many cases at the end of the race. He can provide professional couple counseling, he is one of the best mentors. He shows up in funny places, and every time, He is cheering me on, encouraging me to keep going. Last night He stood at the end of the run, and cheered wildly for me as I finished the run.
The funny thing is He cheered for me on my good runs, and He cheered for me when I missed half the gates. He just kept cheering for me.
I feel like, if it were possible for my avatar to turn around and look back at the run, I might see that there were two sets of tracks. And if I could look back at the gates I had missed, you would only see one set of tracks, and those track would have made every gate. If I could ask, He would say “my son, it was in those gates that I put you on my shoulders and carried you…”
Hee hee….
