Thoughts

Fleeting as they seem and random as they are I have them, as do you.  I think about my kids, my wife, my work, my money and lack there of.  I think about baseball and teaching my boys the perfect swing.  I think about music as it plays over the top of my random thinkings.  I think about God and life and the collision of those two.  Sometimes I over think, like when I was a kid it would take me 20 minutes to chose between a pack of Fleer or Topps baseball cards.  I would then not pick either and buy Donruss.

The bible teaches us to take every thought captive.  All my growing up this was taught or at least learned as a negative.  It was as if our mind was the pampers of the body catching all the feces and urine that flowed freely in and out.  Maybe it was the word captive that brought this type of thinking.  To be a captive means that you have been taken or possibly surrendered to what is capturing you.  So the teaching went something like this "take captive all those bad thoughts and then just hit the delete button, get rid of them."  While I agree hold heartedly that our mind needs to purged of the cranial poverty that destroys it, what then shall we fill it with?

That leads me to this thought, while we are supposed to go all commando on our thoughts like a Navy Seal on Osama there is another side to that coin.  God all tells us to set our minds on things above.  This is the positive to the negative, the AC to the DC, the heads to the tails.  While I feel like I am at least trying  to be in constant purge mode of the filth, I am at the same time trying to capture the "things above" thoughts -- thoughts on love, faith, hope.  Thoughts of creativity and community.  Thoughts that bring life, thoughts that bring joy, thoughts that fill not just your mind, but your heart.

Our thoughts can set us up for successes or set us up for failures. It is our thoughts that often lead us to our destinations.  It is our thinking that often sets the course that we sail.   So where are your thoughts taking you?