TWELVE Day Twelve | March 7 Healer of My Mind

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

It was my first day of college and only my second class. After su ering through an 8 a.m. Spanish lecture, I was running across campus to get to the science building. I knew the general vicinity of where it was supposed to be, but I didn’t know exactly. To make things worse, the chemistry class that I was in danger of missing was being taught by the Chair of the Pre-Med Program … and he was notoriously hard – especially on late-comers. So I ran. And I ran. And I ran some more. And I got there just in time to get lost again. Room (B)17 my schedule said. (B)? What on earth? Maybe “(B)” meant the second floor. Nope. Maybe “(B)” was a second wing. Wrong again.

With three minutes before class was supposed to start, I finally thumped my pride and asked someone. Now, where I’m from, we don’t have (B)asements. Apparently, in Waco, they do. Basement, Room #17. With my heart pounding and my head throbbing, I hurried myself down the stairs – only to miss the third step. That’s when gravity decided to help. Tumbling wildly down the rest of the flight, I landed with a thud in the (B)asement that had eluded me. Bleeding only just a little, I picked myself up, adjusted my backpack (and my hair), and walked into (B)17 right as my professor was closing the door.

I would like to say that’s the last time that I’ve gotten lost. But that would be a lie. In fact, it’d be a big whopper of a lie. Since then, I’ve gotten lost in big cities and lost in the woods. I’ve gotten lost in the airport and in my car. Most frequently, though, I get lost in my thoughts. I get lost in my dreaming and my planning and my worrying. I get lost in the mind-made fear that occurs when my thinking turns against me, when my mind shirks renewal and goes back to its basest preoccupations. It’s obsessive. It’s exhausting. It’s malignant … and addictive. Both feeding itself and feeding on itself, the mind that needs healing isn’t empty; it’s simply full of the wrong things.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle Paul would instruct the Philippians (Philippians 2:5). “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things,” he would beg them just two chapters later (Philippians 4:8).

Jesus is our Healer. And that’s not just a physical promise. It’s an intellectual one, too. And it’s an emotional one, too. And it’s a spiritual one, too. It’s about what we think and how we think. It’s a promise for all of us who are wounded. It’s a promise for all of us who get lost … even the cerebral, head-prone thinkers of this world. It’s for those of us who like to think that we’re thinking when, in actuality, all we’re really doing is trying to escape. It’s a promise for all of us who need to hear Jesus say, “You are found.”