There are many things in life of which we have no control. That is something we can easily agree upon. I don’t think we need to list those things. We just know there are some things we can not fix. We can complain and worry about those things and we can pray about them, but we cannot control them. There are other things that by our choices we can change. I want to suggest that we can choose what we will spend time thinking about.
In my blogs I have zeroed in on Philippians 4:8. This scripture names some things to choose for deep thinking and meditation. “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.” The scripture directs us to choose these things to think about. We can be fair to the text to understand it is telling us to choose these things instead of other things. Make this your choice.
There are so many other things to ponder. If we are not careful, we allow others to feed us things to think about. News media, commercials, movies, music, TV, social media, email, texts, magazines, games, friends and family will dominate our thoughts from dawn to dark, if we choice to let them. Small changes in our understanding and way of thinking happen every day as we choose to let our world pour garbage into our brains. It is interesting to me how so many enjoy the entertainment focus on Zombies. What do zombies want? To eat our brains. The really scary thing is, our brains are being eaten and we are choosing to let it happen.
“Instead.” Instead of choosing things that are not good for our brain, heart, body or spirit; think about things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy. Jesus said, “the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23). It’s a choice.