Thinking

When eight-year-old Johnny was asked for a definition of thinking, his response was: “Thinking is when you keep your mouth shut, and your head keeps Oil talking to itself!” One of the nation’s most successful businessmen was once asked what abilities had enabled him to achieve such monumental Success. “Beyond all else,” he replied, “it is the ability to think well, for in business we are constantly faced with important decisions, and we can only make good decisions if the thinking behind them is thorough and sound. ” He then went on to illustrate what he meant by thorough and sound thinking, by telling the following true story. The famous English poet, A. E. Housman, while a student at Oxford University decided to take the examination for the Latin Poetry Prize. When the students arrived for the examination the professor announced that the topic for the exam was “The Marriage Feast at Cana,” and reminded them that they had three hours in which to complete the examination. Two hours passed and Housman was still thinking hard about the topic while the other students had written many lines of Latin poetry. At last Housman took up his pen, wrote two lines and left the room. He won the prize. His thinking had distilled the entire story of the Marriage Feast at Cana into one powerful thought: “The Water looked at its Creator and blushed!”

How true Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words are when he wrote that “The ancestor of every action is a thought!” A group of children first visited a planetarium, then looked at some tiny flowers. Afterward they drew on paper some of the things they had seen. One boy put a dot in the corner of the drawing. “This is me,” he wrote, then added thoughtfully, “but I am bigger than the stars because I can think!” Thinking is a tremendous quality to be cultivated, because as we ponder and reflect and think things through, our lives will be the more fruitful and blessed for it. Every successful person I know (whether in secular or spiritual work) has been a person who has spent time planning and thinking. “Forethought and diligence are sure of profit,” wrote Solomon, “(but) the man in a hurry is as sure of poverty” (Proverbs 21:5 – New English Bible). Take time to think! It will be worth your while!