EARWORMS

They burrow. They bore in. They attach themselves inside your head. Earworms, a term once used exclusively for insects, is now the name for those unrelenting tunes that you can’t get out of your head. Songs like, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” the “Barney” song, or my personal nightmare: “It’s a Small World After All.”

They say the only way to rid yourself of the insidious infestation is to replace it with another tune—your “cleaner” song. New words and a fresh tune can crowd out the old.

Maybe we could use a cleaner song for our thought-life as well. When lustful or vengeful thoughts creep into our minds, reading and meditating on God’s Word can help to clean up our thinking.

Scripture tells us to love the Lord “with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] mind” (Matt. 22:37) and not to “be conformed to this world” but to “be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind” (Rom. 12:2). It instructs us to think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8).

When our minds wander to evil, the best “cleaner” is to allow the wisdom of the Bible to permeate our thoughts and hearts (2 Tim. 3:16).

Character is the sum total of all our thoughts, words, and deeds. (RBC)