“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles.” — As A Man Thinketh

Most everyone understands the biblical concept of sowing and reaping because we can grasp the simplicity of the logic. If we were to plant corn in our backyard garden we wouldn’t expect spinach to come up. But even though we can grasp the logic, we don’t always act as if we understand the power of this principle. And we certainly don’t act as if this principle will affect us.

An example: For many years my morning ritual began with a thorough reading of the newspaper, most days spending an hour or more before dashing off to the office. I did not know then that our minds are most impressionable immediately upon rising in the morning and just before sleep in the evening.

Fresh from the reading (and thoughts) of the day’s murders, indictments, invasions by foreign dictators, and all other manner of “news”, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that my sowing of these thoughts would reap an “attitude” toward the rush hour drivers who were “conspiring” to slow down my arrival at work. Thus, by the time I did arrive, I had set the tone for my day, and it was not a positive one.

I gave up my morning ritual thirteen years ago and replaced it with a ritual of reading and meditating on some works that will sow “good thoughts” and thus reap “good results.” I wasn’t aware at the time that this was some sound advice offered up by the Apostle Paul, who wrote, “Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about.”

We always reap what we sow and that is especially true with our thoughts. As Emmet Fox writes, “The secret of life then is to control your mental states, for if you will do this the rest will follow. To accept sickness, trouble, and failure as unavoidable, and perhaps inevitable, is folly, because it is this very acceptance by you that keeps these evils in existence. Man is not limited by his environment. He creates his environments by his beliefs and feelings. To suppose otherwise is like thinking that the tail can wag the dog.”

And that’s worth thinking about.