At home, one thing that delights me on a daily basis is walking into a room and being surprised by objects that have mysteriously appeared in all sorts of strange positions and places around the house. The toy aero-plane that for some unknown reason has landed on the bath-room sink, the brass ornament upside-down on the window-sill, the post-it note with ‘Batman’ logo on the kitchen door - all signs that someone small has this way been! There is real beauty in the play and imagination of children. It is free from the sort of rational conventions that guides adult thinking. It is fitting that Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18.3).
Recently I have noticed that the virtues of faith and hope are very closely related to this God given gift of imagination. This is perhaps most obvious in the area of Christian spirituality where one can find uncanny parallels between, say, 16th century Catholic missionaries (Ignatius Loyola) and 21st century protestant church leaders (Brad Jerzak). Both see the human imagination as that place where the Spirit of God calls us deeper into faith and sanctifies our minds.
Faith is about being bold enough to imagine and believe that God’s word to us is true. It is more than positive or wishful thinking. It transports us from our finite human understanding of God and the world around us to the infinite riches of God’s power and wisdom (Hebrews 11.8). Ultimately, faith is about boldly imagining that God meets us in Jesus and has rescued us personally through his cross and resurrection. Locally, it is about imagining that God still speaks to the church and has set before us a Vision for transforming the world.
How should we respond? As I have experienced it, a child is not satisfied until the ideas filling the imagination are turned into reality through play. Will we follow our faith and imagination and invest our time, money, and energies in God’s kingdom over the coming months and watch as God continues to do wonderfully surprising things among us?
