![]() ![]() ![]() Depression is a difficult thing to shake off. Once you have anxiety, you can become depressed. When you worry about a situation or a problem you can become anxious. Place the prints up where kids can see them like on a bulletin board or a white board. I typed in “Christian stereograms” into my favorite search engine and got a ton of great prints. You might see them described as “magic eye” pictures but they are really just 3D illusion prints. Before you begin teaching you’ll need to print one or more illusion pictures, like the ones that were popular in the 90s. PPPS and spoiler: It’s a long-necked dinosaur looking off to the left.Let’s teach kids to keep their minds on Christ! How do we do that? I think this object lesson will help you convey the heart of this message. Give it a shot! If it’s too small on your screen, try some from Google Images. PPS: The header image is a functional stereogram. Then I discovered a stereogram generator, whipped up the header image for this post, and suddenly everything snapped into place. No matter how I squinched my eyes and tipped my head, no magical pictures surfaced. PS: As I wrote this post, I periodically wandered over to Google Images to stare at a series of stereograms. But all I see are Christians fighting on Facebook and coral reefs dying, light and shadow, swirling colors, a surface in chaos.Īnd then my pastor delivers a killer message or I have just the right conversation with just the right person or the sunset is achingly beautiful, and- pop ! There He is. Some days, I squint at the world, trying to catch a glimpse of the God I know is embedded in there somewhere. But they squint and ponder and see nothing. They hear Christians say just stare at it long enough and it’ll pop right out at you. Faith can seem maddeningly complex, full of swirling paradoxes (I mean, does anyone really understand the Trinity?), bickering denominations, and entire libraries dedicated to theological minutiae. Some people can stare at Christianity for a lifetime and only see its surface: an ancient book full of improbable claims, an invisible deity, generations of problematic adherents. ![]() Maybe faith can be a bit like a stereogram. It had been there all along I just hadn’t had the skill, the “sight,” to notice it before. Where moments before had been only a slew of green speckles, I could suddenly see a crouching frog. I picked one up, held it in front of my face, let my eyes drift out of focus, and- pop ! There it was. It had been a while since I’d seen one, so curiosity conquered my previous frustration. In the end, I ignored them, certain I would continue to be foiled by their complexities.īut one day in high school physics class, our teacher left some small stereogram cards on one of the lab tables. No matter how hard I squinted and leaned, I couldn’t force stereograms to work their magic. Others will give themselves headaches by crossing and uncrossing their eyes in an attempt to make the secret picture pop into focus. Just look at it long enough, they claim, and it’ll pop right out at you. Some people can see the hidden shape with a glance. Each stereogram is unique each will drive you insane until you develop the “special sight” that allows you to see beyond the image’s two-dimensional face. The trick is to stare at-or through-the swirling image in such a way that a three-dimensional hidden shape, concealed within the dots and shadows, floats to the surface. I don’t fully understand how they work, but stereograms essentially exploit the brain’s ability to calibrate depth perception. Stereograms (technically “autostereograms,” since you can view them without a special set of glasses) are maddening optical illusions, puzzles built into a seemingly chaotic array of colorful splotches. I’d seen this kind of pattern before in elementary school classrooms and Magic Eye books. The small framed poster seemed to depict Lisa Frank’s first experience with LSD: a Technicolor flurry of dots and swirls replicated in tight iterations from margin to margin. I remember wandering through a museum years ago and spotting something unexpected in a back hallway. Our theme for October is “Why I Believe.” ![]()
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