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. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)   The whole of this letter to the Philippians has two concerns in its background—forms of persecution that Paul and the Philippians are suffering from the outside, and, under that stress, forms of conflict that threaten to tear this church apart from the inside (like the conflict between Euodia and Syntyche).  Similar dynamics have played out in every era of the church.  Even today.  In our day, the church is shrinking—by roughly 14% in the last decade by the latest census numbers.  We feel this and are tempted to believe that our decline is the result of facing persecution from a secularizing society on the outside that is peeling away our members.  Under this stress, we much more easily fall into forms of conflict that threaten to tear the church apart from the inside.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes says: "there is nothing new under the sun."  In the face of these pressures from outside and inside, Paul has invited us to seek joy and conversation in the Lord's presence that we might find the peace of Christ.  And now, finally, he invites us to simply contemplate better things.  Rather than letting our minds mull endlessly over the problems, pressures, and sins that threaten us from without and within, Paul invites us to feed our minds with virtuous things that are excellent and praiseworthy instead.  "You are what you eat" the saying goes.  If you feed your mind a constant stream of junk—ruminations on sin, fear of wildfires and climate disasters, loathing of the government, contemplation of persecution and secularization, mistrust of fellow church members, despair about the future, and whatever else is wrong with this world—well, if that's all your mind chews over in a day, you're going to get indigestion.  And you may very well descend into becoming more and more these things that occupy your mind the most: thinking too much about sin may inadvertently tempt you into it; mistrusting others, you may become less trustworthy; loathing the government, you may increasingly become loathsome; despairing about the future, the clouds of despair may begin to haunt your present, too.  And so Paul invites us to feed our mind with better things.  "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."  That is, chew them over, ponder them carefully, let your mind run wild for a while on the best of what virtue has to offer.  The vegetables of virtue are far better fare with which to feed your mind than the empty, sugar-rush calories of bad news.  And indeed, as you ponder these things you may just find that you become more and more what you ingest: thinking of what is true, you align your life to it.  Pondering what is lovely or beautiful, you may seek to become more lovely in character.  Pondering the right, you become more righteous.     Interestingly enough, this list of virtues that Paul offers are not explicitly Christian virtues.  Some of them don't show up anywhere else in the Bible.  It is actually a virtue list that Paul has drawn from the work of the pagan philosophers of the day.  The subtle point appears to be this: all that is good and true in this world belongs to God and is a gift of God—no matter who came up with it.  And so, as you chew over these virtues, your capacity to see God and His Spirit abundantly at work as the Sovereign King over all Creation and Creatures is expanded.  Slowly it may just dawn: the God whose Spirit is everywhere present and at work, even in a secular world and in the atheist philosopher, is also here with me—and how much more so through Jesus!  May that notion give you peace.  

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