Thought of the Day !!

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Philippians 4:8 (NLT)

I wonder how many places my thoughts will lead me to today? As I look out my window my thoughts are fixated on God's beauty found in the reddish leaves of the tree outside. In an hour or two my thoughts will be fixated on how my stomach is telling me that it needs to be filled. And during the day the various things of my work will be on my mind, like parishioners in the hospital and sermon preparation.

But so many other things will go through our minds in the span of a day's time. If we're not careful, many of these can become negative. We can think about someone who hurt us or how we're going to get back at them. We can focus on the ways we were mistreated while out and about. We can complain about the weather because it's too cold or too hot or too dry or too wet. If we're careful our day and our lives can become one negative thought after another.

But this is what Paul teaches. "Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent (as opposed to not up to par) and worthy of praise (as opposed to being complained about)."

As the day progresses continue to say to yourself these words; true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of praise. And then try to focus on these types of things as opposed to the alternatives.

In the love of Christ,
greg