Philippians 4

What Is My Thought Like?

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report... think on these things. Philippians 4:8.

There is a game I have no doubt you know it called “What is my thought like?” One player thinks of something, and the others try to find out what it is. Have you ever played that game with yourself? How could you? Well, have you ever peeped into your own mind and asked, “What are my thoughts like?” You think you know. I am not so sure. I think if you saw on a lantern screen all your thoughts for one day you would be very much surprised.

There is a fairy tale of a magic flute which had the power of compelling everyone who heard it to speak aloud the thought that was in his mind. If you had that flute played to you, what strange revelations there might be! How ashamed you would be if the mean, wicked, discontented, and selfish thoughts which lurk at the bottom of your mind should all speak out!

And remember, your thoughts are you. Both what you say and what you do come from what you think. The angry blow would never be struck but for the angry thought. Even although they never come to words and actions, bad thoughts are bad for you and for others.

They are bad for you, for they may spoil your whole character. You know that a man who indulges covetous thoughts may become a miserable miser, and a man who nurses a revengeful thought may do some dreadful deed. They are bad even for your health. People may make themselves ill by peevish discontented thoughts, and good thoughts help to make sick people well.

It is not so easy to see how your thoughts can hurt other people, but it is true. You will often hear someone say to another, “Why, you have said exactly what I was thinking!” In some strange way, which we cannot yet explain, people do influence each other by their thoughts, and you are unconsciously a good or a bad influence on the people you are with.

Perhaps you think you cannot help your thoughts. They wander here and there, and you cannot tell how they come and go. Someone has said about this that you cannot help a bird alighting on your head, but you need not let it make its nest in your hair. You cannot help a thought coming into your mind, but you need not make it welcome to stay. Each time you let it come you make it easier for it to come again. The first time it comes over a new path to your mind, but the second time it comes on the road made the first time, and every time the road grows easier and wider till at last it is a broad highway. Then it is difficult indeed to stop the traffic on it. The first time a bad thought comes you are shocked and sorry. That is the time to attack it, for the second time it does not seem so bad, and after that you are accustomed to it.

And how will you attack it? Well, the best way to attack it is to crowd it out, to fill your mind with good thoughts so that there is no room for bad ones. If you leave your garden empty, weeds will spring, but if you fill it with flowers the weeds will find no place to grow.

There is a very lovely poem, called “The Shepherdess,” which pictures the thoughts as a flock of little white sheep, with their owner as the shepherdess. The shepherdess watches her sheep in case they should wander into forbidden dangerous places. She keeps them pure and clean. She leads them to the high hill where the fresh fragrant breeze is blowing, there to feed on the sweetest mountain pasture she can find.

And so the shepherdess of thoughts watches her flock. They may run and skip and be as merry as they like, but they must not go into wrong places. They must keep away from everything that will soil them and make them impure. They must be fed on clean pasture the thoughts and words and deeds of noble men.

Perhaps you would like to hear the poem we have been talking about. Here it is.

She walks the lady of my delight

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;

She guards them from the steep;

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

......

She holds her little thoughts in sight,

Though gay they run and leap.

She is so circumspect and right;

She has her soul to keep.

She walks the lady of my delight

A shepherdess of sheep.

(A. Meynell, Poems, 69.)

What are you doing with your thoughts? Are they running wild anywhere, or are they a flock of little white sheep, kept and tended by the shepherdess?