October 22, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

Luke 5:22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?

Perceiving thoughts of others may have been easy for the Lord. For the rest of us, attempting to perceive the thoughts of others can be a slippery slope.

The first few years that I worked as a sales representative we received telephone messages from secretaries. The toll free number on my business card was for an office in the Chicago area. The call would come in, the secretary would answer and write down the message, and two or three times a day I would call the office for those messages. This was the early eighties, there were no answering machines, no cell phones, no email, nothing like that. Somewhere in the mid-eighties our company began using an electronic voice mail system. I could actually hear the customer leave the message in their own voice. This was novel and a great step forward.

Since there were no cell phones, or car phones as they were called early on, at the time I would stop at road side payphones to listen to my telephone messages. About that time they started putting payphones in strategic locations (gas stations, rest stops) that you could actually sit in your car and talk on the phone. This was really cool, to actually sit in your car and do business on the phone! One day I stopped to collect my messages and I received a call marked urgent from my boss, all he said was “Bill, call me as soon as you get this message.”  He sounded mad.

I called him immediately; he was in a meeting. I drove about an hour and called again, still in a meeting. Another hour, called again, away from his desk. Then he had lunch, and then he was in another meeting, or on the phone, or some other reason why he couldn’t take my call. I tried six or seven times to call him, each time driving down the interstate, making a call on a customer, driving some more, exiting trying to call him again, over and over this ordeal just seemed to last forever.

All the time I was scared. He sounded mad. What had I done? Did he find out about that mistake I made earlier in the week? Was I going to get fired? As the day wore on, I became convinced that I was in real trouble. Not only was he mad when he left the message, he was dodging my calls. I perceived the worst.

Finally, around five or five thirty he took my call. I was prepared for the worst. He answered in his worst (or best depending on the way you look at it) northeastern, condescending, abrupt, no-nonsense tone and said, “Are we playing golf next week?”  That’s it, the next week we were scheduled to be at a conference, and he wanted to know if he should FedEx his clubs down early. He was not mad; he was just… well, you know, just someone from up north. All that stress, for nothing.

Jesus can perceive the thoughts of others with no error, the rest of us best be careful about this. A wrong perception could ruin an entire day, as it did mine. The number of restless nights I’ve had because of a wrong perception on my part are innumerable. I still struggle with this, but I’m learning, trying to get better, praying to get better about it. How about you? Wrong perceptions can ruin a day, a night and sometimes a friendship. That is another illustration for another day.

May the Lord bless and be pleased with your thought life today.

Dr. William Howe