Confetti for the Mind
By Dr. Brad Cole
The first morning of the New Year always consists of cleaning up the mess from the night before – well, mainly cleaning up the confetti. Even though we throw the confetti in only one room of the house at midnight, these little glittery pieces have a remarkable ability to attach to the bottom of shoes and socks until finally they can be found in virtually every corner and crevice of the house – especially if you have young children tromping around like we do!
As I was trying to collect those colorful pieces in all sorts of places, it occurred to me that this confetti (which gave our entire house a certain festive look) was somewhat like our colorful thoughts and imaginations that are scattered inside our mind. Paul said that we are God’s house (Hebrews 3:6) and repeatedly referred to our mind and body as the temple of God.
When our thoughts are focused on God and our daily imaginations dwell on His loving-kindness, our entire being will take on a certain character. Unfortunately, too often our thoughts and imaginations are on everything but God. It is very easy to dwell on the negative aspects of life – usually our own sins or the sins of others – which will invariably diffuse our minds transform us into angry and resentful people.
Jesus tried to teach this to us when He said, “If you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have the source of life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me, and I live in them” (John 6:53-56). Eating and drinking the blood of Jesus means to internalize the truth about God that Jesus came to reveal. Just as food and drink permeates the entire body, in the same way the blood of Jesus (which represents the truth about God’s character that Jesus revealed) must become a part of our entire being. We internalize our God via our thoughts and imaginations. What we think and imagine, the scenes we “play back” inside our minds will shape our characters for we know all too well that we will become what we worship and admire.
For the year 2010, let’s make an active daily decision to “take every thought captive to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), so that we may “come to know his love – although it can never be fully known – and so be completely filled with the very nature (the very character) of God” (Ephesians 3:19).