We’ve had a contagion going around our house for a few months now. Everyone in my house has caught it and it’s one of those things where one person gets over it and then another person gets it and then it just keeps getting passed around. It seems like you don’t develop an immunity to it, you can catch it an infinite amount of times. I haven’t brought it up at prayer time or anything because we don’t usually pray about these things- we just live with them and make excuses for them. You maybe have even caught it from one of us a time or two- there’s no way of really knowing. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. No threat of missing work or school. Because what we’ve been passing around isn’t a disease - we’ve got a bad case of bad attitudes.

And it is true I think that attitudes are contagious. Do you know anyone who tends to find the negative in any situation and sometimes when you see that person your heart drops a little, like ok here we go again. On the flip side, there are some people who can maintain an attitude of positivity despite circumstance. How is that? So one thing I’ve been saying a lot to some of our kids throughout the day is, “hey, remember that your attitude is contagious….because if you’re grumpy with your sister, she’s going to be grumpy with you and then I’m going to be grumpy with you both and then the whole family will be grumpy.”

I think our attitude is mainly decided by two main things: who we spend our time with and what we fill our minds with. Do you agree or disagree with that? Proverbs 22:24-25 talks about the importance of who we spend out time with, and Philippians 4:8 speaks to what we should be filling our minds with. How much would our attitudes improve if we replaced all of our negative thoughts with only things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable. Could be life changing.

I’ve been thinking on those verses but also on this quote from Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor. I think if the thoughts he shares here can be applied in a concentration camp, then we have no excuse to not apply them in our own lives which are far easier. “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

Finally I leave you with Ephesians 4:20-32 which reminds us that our bad attitudes should be part of our former way of life. But we’ve been made new, and with that comes a new attitude in our minds. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”