Thought for the Day 11/5/2021
Friday Tale - In Prison?
The late Dr. Jay Dishman, wrote about habits and the
Alcatraz prison.
"Recently
I visited Alcatraz prison. Once it housed the most hardened of
criminals. Today it is open to tourists under the direction of the United
States Parks Department. Many men have tried to escape Alcatraz, no one is
known to have succeeded. As I listened to the tour guide explain the
impossibility of escape, I thought of other prisons equally confining but where
the doors are never locked, no guards walk the halls, and escape is encouraged
and possible. That prison is habit."
Our
habit of thinking about ourselves and our environment as a jail or a
paradise. We need but to look around us to see people who are rich
emotionally and materially because they think and feel rich. We also see
people who are laden with emotional and material debt because they think
lack. Some are inspired with vision, others are encumbered with doubt.
Some are moved by ambition, others feel safer in monotony. Some reach for
the mountain tops, others huddle in the pits. Some seek opportunity,
others wait for it to knock. The sad fact is that more people are confined
by their thoughts than are fed by them.
Negative
thinking shuts us in a prison, but there is a way out. The apostle Paul
said, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Paul knew a
lot about prisons, both physical and mental. You renew your life by
renewing your mind. You renew your mind when you change your habit of thinking.
~ Steve Goodier
Create in my a clean
heart,
O God, and renew a right
and steadfast spirit within me.
~ Psalm 51:10
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