The Dying Art of Thinking
The 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes (pronounced Day-Kart) is best known for his dictum, “I think, therefore, I am.” A cynic may well quip that Descartes actually put des cart before des horse, because all he could have legitimately deduced was, “I think, therefore, thinking exists.” I do not intend to defend or counter Cartesian philosophy; I only wish to underscore that thinking has much to do with life and certainty.

One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God’s thoughts after Him.

A person sitting at his desk and staring out of the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air, or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal’s Pensees, a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.

The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin’s gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, “Whatever is true . . . pure . . . if there be any virtue . . . think on these things.”

The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. But how does one manage this in a culture where progress is determined by pace and defined by quantity?

What is even more destructive is that the greatest demand comes from neither speed nor quantity, but rather from the assumption that silence is inimical to life.

The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining the “on hold” callers add up as impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly, and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness.

Aldous Huxley’s indictment, “Most of one’s life . . . is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking”, seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. T. S. Eliot observed:

“Where is the life we have lost in the living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.”

Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions for personal and corporate benefit?

Study God’s Word
Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God’s Word, from whence life’s parameters and values are planted in the mind. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture: “Do not go beyond what is written.” Psalm 119 promises that God’s statutes keep us from being double-minded.

Read Great Books
The English-speaking world is endowed with a wealth of books. But much contemporary literature comes perilously close to a promiscuous religion with an appeal for the “feel better” syndrome, rather than the impetus to “go deeper.”
Read authors who stretch you and introduce you to other writings as well. Great writers stimulate your capacity to think beyond their ideas, spawning fresh insights and extensions of your own. Good reading is indispensable to impartation of truth. An expenditure of words without the income of ideas leads to conceptual bankruptcy.

Challenge the Mind
The church as a whole, and thepulpit in particular, must challenge the mind of this generation, else we betray our trust. The average young person today actually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of it. Many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.

Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church pastored by Roy Clements, one of the finest preachers in the western world. Every Sunday at two morning services he preached a one-hour sermon to a packed auditorium.

Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text from the assaults of liberalism. An introduction of a technical nature would take up to 15 minutes of his time before he entered into the heart of his message.

I mention this to say one thing. When we were leaving Cambridge, Nathan, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of Roy Clements to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think. We cannot leave this uncorrected.

This is our first issue of Just Thinking. It is our hope that this newsletter will challenge your mind and stir your heart. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the Great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must. And we must serve Him with all our minds.

Someday I am going to die, and I’m grateful to God for His promises, that there is no need to fear death.

For now, I want to experience the richness of this part of my life, and it truly is just a small part of the eternity we live in.

I realized that the good life has very little to do with the number of days, and more to do with the passion within each day.

It has less to do with how much you have, and more to do with how much you gave.

It has less to do with the comforts you enjoyed, and more to do with the comfort you extended.

It’s not about becoming better than others, not even about bettering one’s self, rather, it is more about making others better.

It’s not so much what we have experienced, but more about the people we shared the moments with.

It’s not so much about finding acceptance, but more about accepting what you’ve found.

It’s not about garnering respect, but learning to be awed by respectable things.

It’s not about the joy of being acknowledged, but about acknowledging the joy of just being.

It’s not about being entertained or caught in euphoria, but about discovering the rapture of what is truly beautiful.

Somewhere, at some point, we lost it, when we decided it was better to love living than to live loving.

Light begins to stream through the gaps in my curtains, drawing bright lines on the wooden floors. When you look closely you’ll see little particles dancing within their beams. They’re flying, no, floating. They’re falling. I may not see the sun rise every morning, the view’s blocked from my bed, but the proof of day is unmistakably clear, even if the proof is a few bars.

We don’t need to see the sun rise to know that darkness has fled, we only need to see the light.
We don’t need to feel the sun’s heat to believe, there’s comfort in its warmth.
And those bars are not a cage. They’re proof that night has ended because day has come.

From the NIV Stewardship Study Bible:

Today’s reading: Psalm 66:1-20

In Psalms 65 and 66, the psalmist recounts all that God has done and all that he has created. In jubilant psalms of praise, the psalmist describes God’s “awesome and righteous deeds” (Ps 65:5), God’s power displayed in his creation, God’s abundance in caring for the land and watering it, God’s bounty in providing for humankind and animals alike. “Come and see what God has done,” he says in Psalm 66. “his awesome deeds for mankind” (Ps 66:5). Physician and author J. Matthew Sleeth invites us to share the healing that comes from bearing witness to the miracle of God’s creation:

When the psalmists advise us how to heal spiritually, they do not tell us to purchase a television, car, house, self-help book, or exercise equipment. God, they say, is to be found in the natural world that he created, a world filled with the grandeur, beauty, and peace that are so often lacking in our material world.

What remedy does God prescribe for our souls? [Quiet] waters and green pastures (see Ps 23:2). Find a place where there is nothing man-made in sight. Sit or lie down. Be still, and know who God is (see Ps 46:10). Do not pray. Do not worry. Do not think. Your house, your cell phone, and your new kitchen do not give glory to God. The Bible states that if it is God-made (streams, mountains, birds, trees), it praises God … When only God-made things surround you, you are in a fellowship of praise.

If you live in a city, try to find one small area that consists of only God-made things. If you must, lie on your stomach and stare at a one-square-foot area. If there is noise or highway sound, put your hands over your ears. You will hear the sound of your own pulse and breath. That’s okay. And that’s the point. You are God-made. We have forgotten that we have far more in common with a honeybee than we do with our SUV or DVD …

Perhaps many of our problems, including those of depression and anxiety, are warning signals that we are living a lifestyle that God does not sanction or want us to lead. The response to mental pain and discomfort should be to seek restoring connection with God. In seeking quiet moments, green pastures, and still waters, we may find just what our souls need.

Do you know in which direction the Milky Way traverses the sky? As the phases of the moon progress, does the light go from right to left, or left to right? Can you identify a greater number of trees or cars? If the Bible says God knows every flower and bird, why do we spend so much effort knowing the names of man-made items? Maybe we’re paying attention to the wrong things. Maybe this is why life seems so hard. If this is our Father’s world, maybe we should pay more attention to it.

I don’t need to know
I don’t need to understand
I know Your love is true
On Your promises I stand
So have Your way

Lyrics:
I.
I’m recounting
How it all began
One smile,
One okay,
One laugh,
Another day
Another everyday day with you
Another everyday day with you

Chorus 1.
I was hoping
Somehow knowing
It was you
I was soaring
Completely falling
Fast for you
Still many things unplanned
But come take my hand
The future’s vast
Let’s make our love last

II.
Has it sunk yet?
Has it sunk at all?
The thought,
Of you,
Of us,
Us two
Finding the best thing that there is
We’ve found the best thing that there is

Chorus 2.
I was wondering
Was I dreaming
But it’s true
Life’s unfolding
I’ll be growing
Old with you
Still many things unplanned
But come take my hand
The future’s vast
Let’s make our love last

Bridge:
I
Neve thought
I needed someone
Was fine on my own
‘Til you
Came along
And proved me
So wrong
Now I’m captured
Enraptured
Captured
Enraptured
Captured since you answered

Repeat Chorus 2.
I was wondering
Was I dreaming
But it’s true
Life’s unfolding
I’ll be growing
Old with you
Still many things unplanned
But come take my hand
The future’s vast
Let’s make our love last