Do you have music that transports you? It may be a song you haven’t heard in years, but as soon as you hear the melody you are taken back to your high school best friend’s car, you’re at that party, or any of a number of places that made an impact on your life. Our brains are super weird and hold on to some of the most seemingly random things. And because of this, we often we have a hard time remembering, all the things we should remember and a hard time forgetting all the things we would like to forget.
In Philippians Paul gives us some great advice on where we should focus our thoughts, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
In our modern age, it seems like the world around us is travelling as fast as possible away from this advice. The 24-hour news cycle exists because people want the dirt! If it bleeds it leads. And many times, we don’t even care about the source. This is especially true in an election year. I don’t think I can remember a period in my lifetime when candidates were running campaigns of mutual respect. It seems like every other headline is saying, “candidate X eats babies.” And if you support candidate X you’ll spend the next 2 hours researching a rebuttal, and if you don’t like candidate X you’ll just think to yourself, “I knew it!”
This is the time that we need to use our self-awareness, and as Paul says in 2 Corinthians, take every thought captive. If it is not honorable don’t engage with it. Add some loveliness to the world. If someone is going read or hear words that come from you let them be commendable. Christians are the people of hope, and when we forget that we take a little bit of light out of the world.
How can you be that song that reminds people of better times? Find those thoughts that are worthy of praise and think about these things.