After viewing what I’m sure is a gorgeous campus, imagine you find yourself standing in front of a door. Before we enter, I, in my unfailing honesty, assure you that the room we are about to walk into has the potential to be frightening, challenging, and disorienting; and, yet, I will not leave you, you will come out whole and with a new understanding. I assure you that no matter what your senses may tell you, the reality of the room is greater. I ask you to just be still and trust; and, in time, we will see ourselves out of the room. This being said, the door is opened.
As the door swings wide, a doubt so strong settles within you that as you take that first step forward a powerful fear captivates you and you are instantly blinded without even a glimpse of your surroundings. Panic explodes like a bomb in your chest, and the hysterical blindness causes you to stumble forward and land on your face. You cry out; and, in that moment, when you hear your own voice a bone-terror invades every functioning system of your body. In that same instant, every single thing your available senses perceive indicate that I lied to you.
You are so consumed in your horror you don’t feel my attempts to help pull you from the floor and in your hysteria you even fight me. Your own screaming mind has rendered my quiet reassurances and pleas inaudible. You exhaust yourself with your maddening frenzy by stumbling about and raging against what you cannot see. Finally, after thrashing about and screaming has only proven to cause you injury and to amplify your considerable terror; you lie still, your chest heaving from the exertion of your fear-driven adrenaline rush, and a paralyzing silence settles over you. You have now completely dismissed everything I’ve told you, and you begin to worry about what you now believe to be true. You have deduced that you are in a small enclosed space, and you shudder at the thought that it may be a coffin. Having forgotten the initial fall, the flailing and your on-hands-and-knees attempts to find an escape; you allow your ears to tell you that the space is so small it isn’t even physically possible that I am with you. Your ears tell you that you probably only have about two inches of room on any side of you. You begin to worry that you’ll run out of oxygen before anyone finds you.
It is in this quiet moment of desperation that you come to the end of yourself and call out for your faithful friend, Beth. And, in this moment of stillness and seeking, you feel my cool hand brush across your forehead…and you know that I am. I am with you, I never left you, and I have been intervening on your behalf through it all…And (blink, blink, blink) with this realization, your hysterical blindness vanishes as quickly as it appeared. You look into my eyes and see the truth. You reach for me and I help you to your feet; and, with your eyes opened, you are able to see the reality of the room you were in. A realization as bright as the dawn makes you feel ashamed, because you know that it wasn’t I who lied to you. The lie existed in only what you perceived with your senses…because the room’s reality was greater than your perception.
Thank you for flying AirBeth, you may now disembark...please do not leave your "right-brain" in the overhead compartment because I foresee you needing it in your personal overhead compartment for the remainder of...your life.
The experience I just described is possible because the room I described does exist. It is the 97% Anechoic Chamber at Paisley University's Ayr campus. Just a quick trip into the science and purpose of the chamber…It is a fifteen by ten room that is designed to be used in acoustics to conduct experiments in nominally “free field” conditions. Such rooms are designed so that all sound will travel away from a source with nearly no sound reflecting back. Common experiments in an anechoic chamber include testing the noise radiation from industrial machinery or measuring the transfer function of a loudspeaker. Anechoic Chambers on a less efficient and smaller scale are recording studios or, in my personal experience, a radio broadcasting studio. It was while reading about anechoic chambers that I had this nightmarish thought about what it would be like to stumble into such a place unawares. Scientists who work within these rooms will readily admit the disturbing quality of the atmosphere and say that they regularly experience disorientation and loss of balance. (For an interesting article, go here. http://gizmodo.com/5372268/microsofts-anechoic-chamber-the-place-where-sound-goes-to-die)
Not long after I read about anechoic chambers I began to dwell on the spiritual implications of sensory perception vs. reality –or- our natural ability to perceive “reality” vs. our spiritual eyes’ capacity to recognize a “God-reality.” This has really stirred me up because, like everyone, there are situations in my life where this corporeal flesh of mine can take one look and doubt, panic, and bone-terror begin to captivate me…But, when I’m still and know, that HE is GOD, that he’ll never leave me (Hebrews 13:5), that he has my best in mind (Jeremiah 29: 11), and that my destiny in his kingdom is unlimited by and will likely supersede my circumstances (Story of Joseph in Genesis 37-), then my spirit is unrestricted and can begin to grasp the awesome way that destiny and purpose can unfold in God’s Kingdom. I become frustrated with myself and ashamed when I find myself doing what I can’t stand to be done to me to God…trying to shove his unfathomably, incomprehensibly creative and good nature into a box fashioned in the limited dimensions of my understanding. And; yet, when I, in shame and defeat, finally surrender myself to the knowledge that I am unable to on-hands-and-knees or with the feebleness of my natural perceptions find my way out of my circumstances, it is then that I call out to Papa God and he begins to allow me to see through his eyes the “God-reality” and boundless possibilities that abound in realms beyond my perception. That is when I take his offered hand and he leads me from the chamber/circumstances that held me captive.
The more beautiful telling of this story is one that I am beginning to experience in my own life, one in which I, with eyes wide-open, walk into the chamber with an open-expectation, fascination, and an eagerness for whatever God-inspired events/behavior/purposes emerge…where I am able to fully trust from entrance to exit that God’s purposes will be fulfilled within me and within his Kingdom.
With such boundless expectations and an inner-resolve to be stretched beyond our limited perceptions, it is enormously awe-inspiring to imagine the possibilities!
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