"For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe." Ephesians 1:15-19
It has been said that children are born to be question marks and grow up to become periods. As people get older and older they listen less and less with their imagination. That is a great tragedy. John piper says, "One of the great duties of the Christian mind is imagination." Our third eye, our imagination, needs to be open in order to see God, to savor Him, to know Him, to love him, to enjoy Him, to worship Him, and to accept the world that He has given us. Imagination is a way of seeing. It is gift that helps us to see God, to see others, and to see life in wondrous ways through His eyes. C.S. Lewis calls imagination "the organ of meaning". All of our information about God and how we relate to His creation are dust without imagination to help us to act upon that information.
To imagine is to change the way we see. Imagination helps us to see that life, no matter how ordinary, becomes extraordinary with God. Imagination is the only way that we can truly love people. Jesus said, "Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them." We must imagine ourselves in their place and imagine what we would like done to us. Empathetic, compassionate, merciful, kind, and helpful love depends much on the imagination of one who loves. Imagination is meant to lead us away from ourselves to others.
Most of all, imagination is meant to lead us to God. It should lead us to a humble, grateful, and reverent heart and a bowed soul; it should lead us to worship. Imagination causes us to see, savor, and show Christ in his beauty and glory. It causes us to see with faith or what Paul calls "the eyes of understanding" beyond what we see. In short, imagination causes us to live in two worlds simultaneously, our world and God's world. It is this ability to live in both worlds that helps us to make sense of this world. It causes us to see God's work in every area of our world. When imagination is working we feel awe, wonder, excitement, joy, amazement, enthusiasm, and passion.
Do you feel those things? When was the last time you felt those things about God and life? The purpose of living with imagination is to learn to see. As Elizabeth Browning wrote, "Earth's crammed with heaven and every burning bush is the dwelling place of God; but only those who see take off their shoes, the rest just sit around and pluck blackberries." The purpose of imagination is to cause you to take off your shoes and sit for awhile. To be still and know that He is God. To change how you see life, so that your life becomes worship perpetually where you are, what you do, and what you say. Imagination cultivates in us a deep respect and awe for God's beauty and bounty, it instills in us a sense of the awe and wonder that we have lost. Familiarity rooted in imagination neither breeds boredom or contempt, instead, it breeds amazement!
Oh how we need to keep our eyes and ears open to what Jonathan Edwards calls God's two great books: the book of scripture and the book of nature. In both those books God has embedded hints and images of Himself. Unless we open up our imaginations to look and see, we'll miss Him.
John Piper says that imagination is like a muscle. It grows stronger if you flex it. And you must flex it. It does not usually put itself into action. It awaits the will. Dear one, ask God to give to you childlike wonder. Pray for the grace of imagination so that you might see Jesus for who He really is, savor Him for His beauty and worth, and show His beauty like a telescope to a world so distant and far from the galaxies of His infinite worth. May we wonder and feel and become again to the most beautiful of all beauty.
Longing to see again with new imagination leading to true worship,
Pastor Bill
1 comment:
Pastor Bill, you hit the nail right on the head! Imagination is a wonderful gift from the LORD, but it most certainly is a great tragedy that it's discounted more and more as we get older. If we're to help, counsel or pray for anyone, how can we really if we can't imagine ourselves in their place, for just one example? I'm a writer too, as you know, and when I write, my imagination works overtime. How many of us recall a moment in the past, especially when we were little, when faced with a perplexing situation? All of us! The older I get, the more I appreciate history (a great bore of mine in high school!) How can we face the trials of our Christian walk unless we try to imagine what Christians in more hostile places and times went thru, not to mention what JESUS Himself went thru? There's nothing wrong with having a vivid imagination to go hand in hand with your intellect, as long as it doesn't cross that fine line into fantasy!
Agape, Scott
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