There’s a well-known study on the internet about attention. A group of kids in different colored shirts are passing a basketball between themselves. The researchers ask you to count the number of passes. After about a minute, the answer is given and we, the viewer, feel good about ourselves if we got it right.
Then comes the twist. Another question: “but did you notice the gorilla?” Turns out that while most of us were attending to the number of passes, someone in a gorilla suit walked right through the group and we failed to notice it. It seems impossible that we could miss something so obvious! Yet this study reveals a truth hardwired into our human biology: where we turn our attention determines what we can and cannot see.
The apostle Paul knows this about us. That’s why he writes at the end of his letter to the Philippian church to “rejoice in the Lord always … The Lord is near, so don’t be anxious about anything. Rather in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (4:4-6).
His audience, much like us, have to live in a world that relentlessly produces anxiety. For them it was the threat of persecution. For us it’s everything from finances to family to the future.
Regardless of the content of our anxieties, Paul knows that if they consume our attention, we’ll be blind to anything else. So he tells the church to “notice the gorilla.”
Or in his words: Rejoice! Pray! Give thanks! Rejoice, not because you have control over the ways of the world or because everything goes right all the time, but because Jesus has come near to you. You are never alone, no matter what causes you anxiety. Your suffering and sorrow are known by the God who has entered into the depths of human despair.
And if you’re not quite able to rejoice, that’s OK. It’s understandable to have worries and fears.
You don’t have to sweep those under the rug. Only, don’t obsess over them either. Bring them to God in prayer instead. Speak out loud to the One who made and knows and loves you. Bring everything: your ugliest thoughts, your lingering uncertainties, and while you’re at it, your thanksgivings. The whole range of human experience is welcome in God’s presence.
Paul goes on to say that when we do these things, “the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds” (4:7). When God’s peace is on duty, we no longer have to scan the horizons for oncoming threats. We can be alert without being anxious. As one biblical teacher puts it, we can stop trying to “worry ourselves into peace.” In other words, we can choose to stop counting how many times fear and anxiety pass the ball back and forth and focus instead on the “gorilla” of God’s presence.
Because, really, once you notice that gorilla, everything else is far less compelling.
Joshua Gorenflo and his wife, Kya, are ministers at Kenai Fellowship, Mile 8.5 on the Kenai Spur Highway. Worship is 11 a.m. on Sundays. Streamed live at kenaifellowship.com.
