There are phone apps that will tell your family exactly where your body is, right down to the parking lot. I wonder what one would show if it tracked your mind. Some mornings the little dot would sit on worry. Some afternoons it would be parked on envy, or an old grudge I thought I had turned loose of.
We ask each other “How are you feeling?” all the time. Hardly anybody asks, “How are you thinking today?” But what I say and do grows out of whatever I’ve been turning over in my head.
Paul knew it. He wrote the Philippians, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). He says “finally” and keeps right on going, and anybody who has sat on a pew knows that feeling. He puts it right after his teaching on joy, gentleness, and not worrying, and I don’t think that’s an accident. Those things grow out of what we think about.
Trying harder to control my words and actions only gets me so far. I need what Paul told the Romans: “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
So start by noticing. Sit still and watch your thoughts the way a hunter on a stand watches the tree line. Don’t judge them. Just see what walks out. Then choose where to look. Paul doesn’t limit it to the Bible. True, honest, lovely things are all around us, in creation, in a good story, in somebody doing an ordinary job with real care.
My mind is going to land somewhere today whether I pick the spot or not. I’d like that little dot to land on something Paul would recognize.
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