You can find just about anything on
YouTube. Want to know how to fix a dripping faucet? Find it on YouTube. Want to
hear a great orchestra play a little-known symphony? Find it on YouTube. Want
to know how to plan a wedding? Find it on YouTube. Want to know how to ride a
motorcycle? Find it on YouTube.
A man over 60 years of age who
recently rode a motorcycle for the first time in his life spent many hours on
YouTube looking up safe riding practices and techniques. One of the things he
discovered on YouTube and from fellow riders is a dangerous phenomenon called
“target fixation.” Target fixation refers to focusing your eyes on a particular
place or thing — say, a guardrail or the middle of a curve or the back of a car
— and then running right into it. There are hundreds of YouTube videos in which
a motorcycle rider has a camera attached to his helmet and you can see this
process as it’s happening. You find yourself yelling at the driver, “Look out!”
But it’s too late.1
The key to avoiding this is to look
beyond and actually turn your head to see where you want to go. So, instead of
looking to the middle of a curve, for example, you look through to the end of
the curve and the road ahead.
Jesus, long before motorcycles, knew
about “target fixation.” In our text today Jesus cautions against this
phenomenon when he says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or
drink], or about your body, what you will wear ....”
This passage tells us, at least in
part, how to live without crashing.
Target fixation — lookin
...approximately 1,311 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.
