imagination

Being along at the school on a Thursday is always a thing I enjoy. And today was no exception.

It wasn't the Head himself today. But the value for the month was the same.

Imagination.

I've been glad to have had the chance these past few Thursday mornings to be giving thought to this. Reflecting on the gift that God has given us in this remarkable facility we have.

What do we do when we start to imagine? Well, in some ways what we're doing is simply putting an image in our minds. And this is an integral part of the way that we're made.

We're given, most of us, the gift of sight. We use our eyes and see things. People, places, absolutely all sorts; a multitude of different images are caught by us through every waking moment of the day.

Sight is a wonderful gift. Once you start to lose it you know all about how wonderful it is. I understand that. We have older folk here who are losing their sight; and it's hard. Hard beyond words for them all. The world has become a darker, less colourful place.

But alongside that gift of sight, we've also been given the wonderful gift of memory. The ability to store, and then later retrieve at will, all sorts of different images or pictures from our past.

We remember events and occasions and people and places and moments which all left their mark on our lives. Sometimes we choose to remember. Sometimes the memory is triggered without any conscious decision on our part at all.

If the gift of sight enables us to see and enjoy the richness of our present situation, the gift of memory enables us to feast upon our history and savour once again the joys we've known.

And the sorrows and hurts as well, of course. I appreciate that. There also is a 'downside' to this gift. People can be haunted by their memories and sometimes wish this gift that God has given us had never been bestowed.

It's striking, though, how often in Scripture we're exhorted to make use of this gift. Remember ... remember ... remember.

Imagination, I think, is its complement. In some ways this is a yet more remarkable facility with which we've been endowed. The gift of imagination.

By the use of this gift we're able to put images into our minds of things we haven't yet seen. We're able to picture the future. We're able to dream of the things that might be, instead of the things that just are or have been.

We're able to see in advance what could be. We're able to dream in advance of what will be.

It's more than a little interesting, therefore, that alongside the biblical call to remember, there's also this future dimension. The great word of promise which is wired into the church's DNA on the day of her birth (Acts 2) runs along these lines -

"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams."

Seeing what is not there (or is not there just yet), as if it were. Seeing what might be, what could be, what will be.

The Spirit of God gives a potent kick-start to this integral part of our make up, and helps it come into its own. He gives us to see that the Lord who's come into our lives "is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or (wait for it) imagine."

We learn to dream. We learn to see visions. We learn to get an image in our minds and hearts of what is yet to be. We learn to see God's future, and that image casts its shadow back in time and starts to shape our living to that end.

I think that's at least something of what the apostle meant when he wrote about the future which is promised us and said -

"Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure." [1 John 3.2-3]

The picture we're given is this - we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

And that picture of what's yet to be, of what we'll one day be like, both informs our present perspective and transforms our whole way of living. We start to become bit by bit what one day we'll finally be.

A God-given gift which comes into its own when the Spirit of God bathes our lives.