Lost and Found

One day, before Christmas, I went shopping at a local Target store. I parked my vehicle and wandered into the store. After making my purchase, I exited the building and returned to where I had parked looking for my van. When I arrived at the spot, behold, it was gone! I stood looking around. Our van is not that hard to find. As I was scanning the parking lot, I noticed a gentleman sitting in a car watching me. I did not want him to think that I could not find my van, so I began to wander across the Target parking lot looking for it.

After walking completely from one side of the lot to the other and back again, I could not find my van. I was sure that someone had stolen it. Just as I was about to start the journey again I remembered … I drove our car. Glancing around, sure enough there it was right where I started looking in the beginning.

Have you ever lost something only to discover it “right in front of your nose?” Or have you ever just known that your appraisal of a certain situation was true only to discover much later it wasn’t?

One of the ways the brain works for handling problems is to create mental models. We all have a mental map of how we think or perceive things to be. It is the way we learn to make it through our world. However our mental maps can be flawed. What happens is we tend to see what we expect to see. You tend to see what makes sense to you at that moment. Yet that doesn’t make it true. Every mental map comes with its own underlying assumptions based on our experiences, memories, and emotions – all of this influences what we expect to see and what we plan to do about it. (Adapted from the book, Deep Survival)

In reality our mental maps can be surprisingly strong and the abilities of working memory surprisingly fragile. We all say that the mind plays tricks on us, but few really believe it. What we tend to do is to take all information and fit it to our own mental models. We shape the things we see, hear and feel to fit our mental maps of life. So we are in a sense trying to shape our environment to fit our view of realty. In the end we end up losing ourselves in an unreal world that we have shaped to fit our view life.

It is great to know that God comes to seek that which is lost. God works in our lives to lead us out of our unreal world into the true world he created. We must learn to see life with His eyes, hear with His ears and understand with His heart. As we do this, life takes on new meaning. The truth sets us free, that which was lost is found and we enter into the adventure of life as God created it to be lived.

Is God working to change your mental map?