The first time I heard Philippians 4:8 focused on in a sermon—many, many years ago now—I felt a twinge of discomfort, to be honest about it. Here is the passage (though it would be good to look it up in your own Bible, too):

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

It’s a positive and uplifting verse, to be sure, and portions of it resonated with me. However, I recognized that I had certain interests—things I enjoyed “meditating on,” if you will—that probably didn’t fit such descriptions. Not that they were obviously terrible or filled with evil. But still, there was a draw to some things that, if I were going to truly begin using Philippians 4:8 as a sort of “mental filter” for what I was willing to choose (for instance) for entertainment, then I would have to start spending less time with some of the things I then enjoyed spending more time with.

There is, in an odd way in this messed-up world, an allure to ugly things, things lacking proper virtue, and things that are not really of good report. For example, I could think of heroes in stories who were really antiheroes—not only lacking admirable qualities but also possessing some frankly evil ones, yet for whom it was the negative qualities that made the characters attractive. It would be one thing if the attraction were the opportunity to see the character overcome those qualities and become a better person, but it wasn’t. The evil qualities were part and parcel of the hero’s real appeal.

Again, there is, simply, an appealing quality to darkness, to the “bad guy”—and, yes, to wickedness and evil. Even if we don’t want the objects of our mental devotion—songs, stories, art, what have you—to be consumed by such things, we too often enjoy the flavor they add or the dark sentiment they mix in. Were we all that God wants us to be, it would not be so. But this world trains us, even when we aren’t aware—perhaps most effectively when we aren’t—to want for the things we should not.

But as I matured over the years, I began to see the wisdom of Philippians 4:8. The more time I spent seeking to apply the Apostle Paul’s advice, the more I began to appreciate when something lacked such darker characteristics and when they more fully embodied the elements of virtue, purity, and praiseworthiness. To be sure, I had a lot of work to do. It’s not an easy task to train your mind to begin moving in different directions—recognizing that one path is more appealing and enjoyable than another is not the same thing as training the feet and legs to walk that newer path. But it is a start. And Paul’s admonition that we work to meditate on those things in our mind—the things that are noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy—is how we begin to devote ourselves more fully to them in all areas of our life.

That brings me to this morning. I woke up earlier than usual, while it was still dark, and seeing how I was not going back to sleep, I decided to go ahead and get up. The idea of making a little coffee and eating just a bite of my wife’s amazing homemade sourdough bread fresh out of the toaster was appealing enough to get my feet on the floor. Then, a little later, sitting here in the living room where I am typing this now, I noticed that dawn was creeping over the horizon, so I decided to take my coffee outside to the steps and driveway to go look at it for a while. I’d heard enough about how some neurologists say it is beneficial for the human brain to get dawn light into your eyeballs, so I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

And as I stood there, looking over my neighbor’s misty field across the street, soaking in the orange sky mingling with the blue above as the sun continued to make its presence known ahead of its arrival to begin the day, I thought to myself that I was thankful to God for the beautiful things. Because the scene truly was beautiful: the mixture of hues, silhouettes, and a touch of haze on the ground with a clear and brightening sky above. It was simply beautiful, and it reminded me that there were beautiful things in my life and that God wants me to spend time meditating on them, not on the ugly things. In fact, the longer I looked at the horizon there (and the temporary nature of sunrises always presses me to linger in looking at them), the more I thought that wasting time on the ugly things leaves less time for things like this—the truly beautiful things. And as I continued to enjoy the scene in front of me, I thought, What a bad trade it is to spend precious time meditating on the ugly and the unworthy, since it takes time away that could be spent instead on the beautiful and the good.

So, work to take Paul’s advice seriously. Your Father in Heaven longs to give you an eternal existence completely and utterly filled with the noble, the just, the pure, the lovely, the good, the virtuous, and the praiseworthy—the beautiful. And every moment spent meditating on those things is an opportunity to taste, in however small a way, that future. And it is a moment spent learning to be drawn in the right direction.