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