I remember a time when Sarah and I moved out of a crummy apartment and into a better one. While we were living in the old apartment, we had been full of energy, ideas and enthusiasm to improve the place, but once the decision had been made (or even nearly made) to move into a new apartment I stopped seeing the place as it might possibly be some day and began to see it only as it was. My mind became full of the new place and its potential, and it wasn’t that it made me look on the old apartment with new, less hopeful, eyes, but it made me look not on the old apartment at all anymore.
In verse 2 Paul wrote something that reminded me of that experience of changing apartments. He wrote, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” When this world is our home, it is natural that we would be full of energy, ideas and enthusiasm for this place, but one of the very definite proofs that we are no longer of this world (John 17:14-16) is that we begin to set our minds on things that are above, not here on the earth.