Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday July 19, 2010

A famous commercial for a College Education for Negros used the phrase, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" and the dear wife of my youth rephrases the statement to read, "A waist is a terrible thing to mind." In either case the power of the mind is brought to the fore and while the mind is super important in every area of life, it is too often ignored, wasted, abused and misused.

The English word, mind, is used 99 times in the Bible and its importance in the prosperity or poverty of individuals and nations cannot be overstated. All sorts of misery is said to be the fruit of those who mind earthly things, with the opposite the portion of those who fix their mind, thoughts on the heavenly.

My favorite Old Roman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who took for his first case as a lawyer the plight of a poor farmer who was battling Rome due to the enormous tax burden placed upon him to the point of losing his farm. Cicero remained a staunch defender of the individual against the cancerous growth of the Empire's appetite for ever more power via taxation. According to Taylor Caldwell Cicero wore a cross as indicative of his expectation of the coming Christ. One of Cicero's many famous statements is this one concerning the importance of growth inwardly via the cultivation of the mind:

"The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man."

That the human mind instinctively craves knowledge is witnessed to by the Eden account of the fall due to Lucifer taking advantage of this desire and enticing the departure from God's proscription against eating one forbidden fruit. In our search for the enhancement of our mind through the acquisition of knowledge we are to be controlled and thus protected by adhering to the boundaries imposed by the Lord. Failure in this area leads to disaster. Minds which have broken the boundary chains run amuck as witnessed by the mindless atrocities of The Third Reich.

On the other hand, minds that quench the unending thirst for more knowledge lawfully, under the constraints set by God, find food for the soul and an increased ability to focus their power on the good, the productive, and along the way become compassionate for the less blessed. Most, certainly not all mental, emotional problems can be traced to a divided mind. An Old Testament writer who left the pinnacle of power to obey God commented on this. Isaiah 26:3:

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2010 Use with credit

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