I Can Only Imagine

I Corinthians 2:6-3:4

Noon recess in my Kindergarten year was spent retreating and recovering from the dull routines imposed by the adult world. It was in those 25 minute oases that I recovered, not only from Mrs. Kjolson's classroom gulag, but that I also recovered the fresh limitlessness of my imaginative powers. On the Clearbrook playground, alongside various slides and swings for the rest of the student body, off to one far end was this treasure of a barely used cylinder-shaped climbing bar apparatus that faintly (to my imagination) appeared could be construed to be a spaceship. And so, near every recess my friend David and I climbed into said spaceship and were swept away into extraterrestrial orbits of imagination. We would climb to the top and hang by our legs and imagine ourselves transported to far and marvelous worlds. We would for those minutes share increasingly incredulous stories of spunk and adventure. And, of course, in the end each story worked out heroically and well. (This sure outcome was aided by the fanciful comfort that our spaceship was limitlessly resourced with an all-a-kid-could-eat supply of candy!) Honestly, I loved Kindergarten (& Mrs. Kjolson), but sometimes I wonder if my mind was best exercised and enlarged in her classroom, or by those 25 minute spaceship escapades during recess!

So, just when does imagination wane in a person?! When does a soul grow old, and hopeless, and completely rational, ceasing to see and reach for worlds and treasures beyond? When for you was entrance thru Narnia's portal self-disqualified by maturity?

Or, could it be that we have too soon given up on imagination, relegating it to childhood and immaturity?! I couldn't help but think (& exult) as I read today's scriptures that in the spirit world (the real world), the imagination trend runs precisely in the opposite direction. It is the immature who cannot imagine! They are the ones who are stuck in dark, rationalizing thoughts, clamoring in envy and quarrels over the small visible world and limited resources they see in others' lives. They live for nothing beyond the immediately concrete and tangible.

It is for the truly mature to imagine! The more aged and spiritually seasonedone is, the more wantonly may the soul be set free to see beyond the terrestrial boundary, and dream and believe in worlds and wonders of grace, and spiritual pleasures exotic and perfumed!

Oh, to grow old well!! And, to be wildly imaginative of the goodness that waits one made saint by Christ! Poor spiritual infants, or those not even yet spiritually born, are senseless and dull to all of this. But real maturity never exhausts and certainly never outgrows imagination.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.

If that isn't an invitation to imagine, I don't know what is.

Pastor Paul


Notes:

v. 6 - it is 'mature believers' who can best embrace mystery

v. 7 - it is spiritual infants, even spiritual preborns who have no capacity to dream. The quote in verse 9 from Isaiah seems less an affirmation of the mature, than a prediction levied against dreamless immature dullards.

v.10 - but it is to 'us God revealed these things'!

v.14 - people who aren't spiritual cannot perceive these other-worldly wonders - 'it all sounds foolish to them'

v. 3:1 - spiritual infants, dulled and controlled by this world, cannot handle rich fare, but only bland bare sustenance. Their minds are narrow and small, and they only clamor like a child for comparative crumbs that are visible, nearby, and in an other's possession.