Choosing What Surrounds

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Ray and I recently went inside a fast food restaurant chain that we visited often when our kids were small but have visited very rarely for the last couple of decades. I found it ugly and depressing. The children’s play area was so dark that I looked up to see if something was wrong with the lights. I couldn’t find any lights that were out; there just weren’t many lights. The play equipment wasn’t cheerful at all either, but dull and uninviting.

The murals on the walls were confusing — a hodgepodge of state outlines randomly superimposed on one another.

My taste buds react kinda so-so when I eat fast food, but the rest of me just might react not so well at all. I stood there trying to look at the large lighted menus behind the counters, but they kept changing. Just as I was trying to read one section, it would disappear and another screen would pop up.

I tell you all this at the risk of seeming like a dinosaur for the second day in a row, but I left the restaurant wondering, “What happened to beauty?” As I reflect on it now, I think, “What happened to order? And what happened to light?”

Earlier this week, we talked about teaching your children to think. The eighth verse of Philippians chapter 4, which I have shared with you several times, tells us exactly what people — young and old — need to be thinking about. One of the things we are to think about is “whatever is lovely.” Surround your children with what is lovely and they will think about beauty, come to appreciate beauty, and even come to create beauty themselves.

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If we came right out and told people that we wanted to tell them how to think, they would likely be quite offended. However, the world bombards us with messages about how everyone “ought” to think. Let’s don’t be intimidated by that. Let’s fight lies, dishonor, wrong, impurity, ugliness, scandal, mediocrity, and whatever else is beneath God’s design by purposefully and actively surrounding ourselves, our children, and our families with the wonderful opposites that God gives us so freely.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is of good repute,
if there is any excellence
and if anything worthy of praise,
dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

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