Have you ever noticed that when you are waiting for something in particular, your brain has a way of tuning everything else out? For example, if you are waiting for a certain car to pull into your driveway—it’s two in the morning, let’s say, and your seventeen-year-old is not home yet—you are not liable to be paying a whole lot of attention to the sound of an airplane flying overhead or the hum of the refrigerator suddenly kicking on.

In that moment, your ears, your eyes—indeed, your entire being—are all attuned to one frequency alone … namely, the familiar sound of that specific automobile arriving safely home. If someone tries to talk to you in the meantime, you may pretend to listen, but only until—shhh!—is that the car? In other words, when you are watching and waiting for one thing, it is often difficult to notice anything else—especially something that you are not expecting.

I read awhile back of how a group of scientists actually devised an experiment to demonstrate this phenomenon. Here’s how it worked. They sit you at a table in front of an ordinary deck of cards and begin flashing them at you, asking that you identify the card as quickly as possible—nine of diamonds, three of hearts, jack of clubs—whoops! What was that one?

Then they repeat the exercise, slowing it down a little so that you can get the ones you missed the first time around. However, there is still one card that you cannot correctly identify. And by the third time, they are moving through the cards so slowly that you feel like a complete idiot at not being able to name this one card.

The mystery card, as it turns out, is a six of spades—only it is red, not black—which is why it keeps throwing you. You are expecting to see a black six of spades, and when the unexpected is flashed before you (in this case, a red six of spades), you have trouble identifying it.

It is a fascinating demonstration of how easily the brain can get fooled; but I think it may also have important theological implications. After all, if there is one thing the Bible makes clear, it’s that God does not always work in the ways that we might expect. Thus, if you want to recognize how God is working in your life, you have to keep both your eyes and your heart open … but perhaps most of all, you have to be open to being surprised!