Spotting The Invisible Gorilla

Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV) –

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Back in the 1990s two academics Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted an experiment where they asked participants to watch a video of two teams passing basketballs between them. One team was wearing white, the other black. The participants were asked to count the number of passes made by the team in white. Part way through the video, a man dressed in a black gorilla suit walks into the middle of the game and waves at the camera. Half the participants watching the video were so focused on counting the passes they did not notice the gorilla. The experiment, known as “The Invisible Gorilla” has become one of the best-known experiments in psychology and demonstrates two important truths: we are missing a lot of what is going on around us, and we don’t know just how much we are missing. Check out the experiment here.

This tendency of humanity not to notice what is going on right in front of our eyes is equally true in our attitude towards the work of God. So often we miss what God is doing, we get so caught up in counting the passes that we miss the gorilla. In this passage God says to his people ‘Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’ He is encouraging us to actively be on the look out for what he’s up to.

God is doing something new in 2021 that he did not do in 2020. Do you know what it is? Can you see it? 

Prompt – Ask yourself the question – what new thing is God doing in my life at the moment?

Prayer – Father, thank you that you are always at work. Please open my eyes so that I can see the new thing that you are doing.