I love taking photos with my phone. The settings on my phone camera has an adjustable focus option. I can make the lens focus on a particular object, the foreground or on the background. This causes all the rest of the photo to became out of focus or blurry. The purpose of adjustable focus is to draw the eye to a specific area of the photo that the photographer wants to highlight. Our minds will naturally try to make sense of what we are seeing and be drawn to what it sees is in focus.
This such a great metaphor for our lives to. What we focus on and what we choose to highlight in our worlds is what our mind will be drawn to and what it will ‘see’. We know this is true, as we have all had that experience like if you decided to buy a red Honda and you would start to see red Hondas everywhere, when before you saw none. It is not that there is suddenly more red Hondas on the road coincidentally at the same time you purchased one. It is now you are aware of red Hondas and you are focused on them, your mind now sees them. They were always there, but now they are your focus.
It is the same with our feelings as well. Have you ever had one of those days when everything went wrong? Really, did everything go wrong or were you choosing to focus on the negative parts of the day, so it just seemed like everything went wrong. In fact, there would have been good things that happened but because you where only focusing on the negative, the good became blurry and out of focus.
Alternatively, we all know people who are focused on the positive all the time and they could have a car accident and be happy about it because they made a new friend. They have trained the lens in their brain to only focus on the positive in every situation.
This is not just positive thinking or manufacturing positive experiences, instead this is choosing to focus on what is already good in your life and what is important. Let the negative and unimportant became out of focus and blurry and it will have less impact on you. The Bible encourages us to focus on what is righteous, good, and true and the dwell on these things and not let our minds wander into unhelpful and hopeless areas.
To be happy, to be productive and free, we need to choose to focus on what is true and helpful. Set your lens to focus on the good and let the rest blur out and your experience of life will be quite different.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
