Has Your Imagination of God Dwindled?
Feb 10, 2021 at 6:52 AM
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. (Isaiah 40:26, NIV)
I am created by God. My body and soul are created and gifted by God. Of course, that includes my imagination.
But in my faith life, I’ve often neglected using my “imagination” to know God.
Behind this neglect, on one hand, is the fact that the Bible doesn’t directly mention “imagination” (words like imagination or imagine rarely appear in the Bible). On the other hand, it’s my subconscious association of “using imagination in my faith life” with superstition. In my mind, imagination feels emotional, spontaneous, and arbitrary.
Indeed, imagination is emotional. It’s emotional because it needs emotions and feelings to fuel it and expand. Often, the results of imagination are a “vision,” which isn’t something you can quantify or calculate like a math formula, and can even seem illogical.
However, imagination is also rational. It has a rational aspect because it doesn’t operate purely on emotions and feelings, indulging in aimless, boundless “mental wanderings.” Sometimes, imagination involves using insight, knowledge, and logical reasoning to push thoughts deeper step by step.
Unlike other religions, in Christianity, God is spirit—unseen to human eyes, unheard by human ears. More than that, God prohibits the making and worshiping of idols. We worship God in spirit and truth. The term “spirit” translates to “Spirit” in English.
Imagination, unlike reading, conversing, or writing, isn’t an activity performed with the “body,” but rather, a “spiritual / Spirit” activity. It can’t be seen or touched.
Every Christian knows God through the Bible. Whether it’s about “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea, Jesus being born in a manger, the miracle of feeding five thousand, or the new heaven and new earth in Revelation, all require us to fully employ our “imagination.” These are things we’ve never seen and cannot see.
Human imagination is truly amazing and wonderful.
Oswald Chambers also mentioned, “The people in Isaiah’s time looked only at the face of idols, hence lacked imagination.” He’s so right. Let me share two very specific feelings.
When I idolized “houses,” my imagination about a good life was limited to “without a house, one cannot be happy.” Different people can have completely different lifestyles. You might not need to live in big cities or in China; you can rent, or travel on the road, even with a family and kids.
When I made my children’s education an idol, imagination restricted me to think there’s only one way to educate them, that they had to compete on this single road, even believing a good education is the only way a child can succeed. But when my focus shifts from “the world and trends” to the Bible’s teachings, my imagination expands and I realize there are other ways and possibilities for education.
For things like when to marry, who to marry, whether to buy a house, whether or not to have kids, how many kids to have, and what kind of education to choose, societal trends and mainstream choices form a “standard package” over time. It seems choosing the “standard” can’t go wrong. But imperceptibly, we easily worship and chase after the “standard package” as an idol.
Oswald Chambers exhorts me to break free from the ties of idols and leave behind anything that obstructs my thoughts of God.
Thank God:
- Thank God for guiding me to confidently and clearly introduce myself in English at a meeting. I believe the ability to speak a language is a gift from God. This year, from New Year’s Day, I’ve been reading the English version of “My Utmost for His Highest” during devotional time, which I think helps improve my English. Improving English wasn’t the goal of my devotions, but it inadvertently improved.
- Thank God for Li Wei and Brother Xiao for helping my friend YJ with a cervical spine examination report.
- Thank God for my dad helping me find out about some birth policies in my hometown.