Dr. Irwin Braverman, a dermatologist and director of medical residents at Yale medical school, was concerned about his students' power of attention. Braverman noticed the high-tech, fast-paced practice of medicine had dethroned careful physical exams and thorough patient histories. As a result, he feared that doctors were losing their power to observe and pay attention to the obvious.

So he had a brilliant and novel idea. Braverman brought these young doctors to a university museum to expose them to a puzzle they could not solve instantly: a painting. Afterward learning to gaze at and observe a work of art, their ability to describe patients improved dramatically. In a now-mandatory program that Braverman and a museum curator created, Yale medical students each examine a painting for fifteen minutes, then discuss their observations with a guide and their peers. "Look at the normal, not just the eye-catching," the students are told. "Approach the work with an open mind, moving past first assumptions. Revisit the subject, again and again."

"We are trying to slow down the students," said Yale Center for British Art curator Linda Friedlander, the program's cofounder. "The artwork is a means to an end." In effect, the painting, with its hidden stories, becomes a substitute patient. Adopted by dozens of other medical schools, the brief intervention was shown in a three-year study to boost diagnostic observational skill by nearly 10 percent. At Harvard Medical School, students given eight hours of similar training produce nearly 40 percent more observations and offer more sophisticated, accurate notations on a visual skills exam than those not enrolled in the course.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Spiritual disciplines such as Bible reading, Meditation, and so forth; (2) Focusing on Christ in the midst of the world's distractions; (3) Marriage, especially the kind of love and attention that husbands should give to their wives