“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” – Romans 12:2

THE SET-UP: Yesterday I received the following email from one of the editors I work with in Tampa:

Hi All – Just a quick reminder that I need your brainstorm ideas by 9:00 a.m. Thursday morning – Sept 3. Please provide 4 ideas: a paragraph for each with any bullet points or research.

I shot off this reply:

I’ll see what I can do – My brain is already partly cloudy; (let’s hope) there’s a storm in there somewhere!

BRAINSTORM: So I’ve been thinking about this, “brainstorm” concept. According to Wikipedia, “Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.”

But for me, the guy who doesn’t get to actually go to the meeting, this is less a groupthink process and more akin to opening a chute, dropping in a bunch of ideas, and hoping a few of them land in the right place.

What my editor is really looking for from me is more akin to this citation I found at Dictionary.com (from 1849) – “brainstorm: brilliant idea, mental excitement, fit of mental application.”

I really like that. So this morning I need to move from “partly cloudy in my brain” to brilliant ideas, some cerebral excitement, and a fit of mental application!

PRAYER: To be honest, it’s kind of how I pray when I talk to God about my work at the beginning of the day. I invite the Holy Spirit to get those neurotransmitters firing in my synapse, to somehow harness the hundred billion or so neurons, and the hundred trillion or so potential connections in the three-pound lump of gray matter wedged inside my cranium.

Billions of neurons; potentially trillions of connections! Light them up, Creator and Teacher, and help me to discern the message you want me to share today, to know the mind of Christ, and to fill my work with words that are “good and pleasing and perfect.”

Save us all from intellectual torpor, mental sloth, and spiritual apathy.

Amen – DEREK