Attitude

I’ve never really believed in the Power of Positive Thinking. I am a positive person, I think; however, all of my good thoughts cannot cause something to happen. No matter how positive I am; no matter how wonderful my attitude, I can’t make it (whatever it is) happen.

I do believe in the Power of God. His power can make things happen, but I’ve never been able to “connect” that power in my mind to positive thinking or to a good attitude. I figured that they must be connected, but I wasn’t sure how.

I think that an experiment in the lab finally helped me to understand.

I have been working on a new procedure in the lab called Western blotting. (Oh, no, not biology!). This procedure works by transferring protein from a “gel” to a “membrane” using electricity. The electricity flows through a “transfer solution,” and moves the protein to its new location. The only problem (or one of the problems) in my procedure was that electricity wasn’t flowing very effectively through my solution. It wasn’t the power supply – that was working perfectly. The fellow in our lab and I decided to try to work on the “transfer solution.”

We made two versions. Our original solution, that had an acidic pH, and a new one, that was much less acidic. We tried them both. As predicted, the acidic solution would not allow current to flow. Eureka – the new solution worked! The power flowed through the less acidic transfer solution. The electricity was meeting less resistance in the new solution, and was able to cause the protein to move to where it was supposed to be.

Maybe that’s what attitude is about. It isn’t the power – the power comes from God, and that’s working perfectly. Attitude is the transfer solution. An acidic attitude won’t conduct much power. A less acidic attitude is necessary for the power to flow in abundance.

Photo credit: Not mine. This one was in a PowerPoint presentation that someone sent me via email. Great picture. I would call it, "Power in His Hands," and that's what we have.