And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8, N.L.T.)

A Baptist preacher of another day wrote this:

Don’t ever send a buzzard out to report on the landscape. He’ll fly over all kinds of beautiful flowers, green meadows, blue lakes and gorgeous mountain ranges; and when he comes back and you ask, “Buzzard, what did you see?” he will answer, “I saw a dead cow covered with maggots and big purple flies.” That buzzard may have flown over ten thousand beautiful flowers and trees and placid lakes to see maggots and flies on cows. Being a buzzard caused him to see that.

But send a honeybee out to report on the landscape, and when he returns ask him, “Honeybee, what did you see?” and you will hear a different story: “I saw ten million little flowers filled with nectar, and I got all I could take and added it to my honeycomb. My! I must have made a pint of honey today!” It flew over the dead cow and didn’t see it. It was looking for something else – flowers.

If you look for the worst, you will probably find it. If you look for the best, you will find that down the road too. SO GO THROUGH LIFE LOOKING FOR THE BEST.

Our text verse tells us to fix our thoughts on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise. That’s another way of saying, “Go through life looking for the best rather than the worst.” Unfortunately, the worst is usually easier to spot. That is not to say, though, that the best isn’t out there too if we are willing to search for it.

Keep this in mind, Christian, whenever life funnels you through a difficult season. Right there in the midst of your struggling, pain, disappointment, and frustration, look for the good in all the bad. Ask the Lord to help you reprogram your mind so that you can fixate on everything that is right rather than on everything that is wrong. And wherever you find something that is (to use Paul’s description from the conclusion of our text) “worthy of praise,” take the time to actually praise the One who has blessed you with that particular thing.