My mind is racing. My brain is full. It’s that time of pre-Vacation Bible School frenzy that Children’s and Family Ministers experience every summer. So this morning I decided to write about something completely unrelated to VBS and hope the fog lifts or at least clears enough so I can see my way to the next task at hand.

As I sat down at my computer, I started thinking about what to write. I thought about who might read this blog. When I began to type, I thought about what a really bad typist I am, and I thought about how auto-correct sometimes knows what I really want to say and sometimes it doesn’t.

You might be thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner, or what you’ll do if your boss sees you on the internet while you’re supposed to be working. You are probably thinking that you wish I’d get to the point.

I decided to write about thinking. It is the season of graduations, and students have done a lot of thinking during their time in school. I read somewhere that the average person has 10,000 separate thoughts every day. That seemed to me like a lot of thoughts, and so I looked for that research online. I found a different study that said the average person doesn’t have 10,000 but more like 50,000 thoughts, and one source even said we have 100,000 thoughts every day.

So I started thinking about which number is right. And I wondered how people can count their thoughts, anyway. I mean, how can you tell when one thought stops and another thought starts? It seems to me that it’s impossible to count all of our thoughts. So, let’s just say we think a lot.

And what we think about is important. Norman Vincent Peale once said, “Change your thoughts and you change the world.”

The Bible tells us what kinds of things to think about.

From now on, brothers and sisters, if anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things: all that is true, all that is holy, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is lovely, and all that is worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:8 Common English Bible (CEB)

So, graduates, you’ve studied and learned a lot. You have gained much knowledge. But be sure to fill your minds with thoughts that are excellent, admirable, true, holy, just, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise, and you will also grow in wisdom. And maybe you will change the world.

Dear God, Help guide my thoughts to things that are good, things that are true, things that please you. Oh, and if you would steer my thoughts toward what would help create an awesome VBS experience, that would be great, too. Amen.