The caption reads "
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground"
Last week I wrote of the power of prayer to open up our imaginations to all the goodness that God has in store for all of us. Most of us, if not all of us, use our imaginations to dream of a life that is beyond words to describe. A life full of joy and marvellous in as many ways as it could be here on earth. We imagine for ourselves and for those who we love “great things” that are all positive and glorious and wonderful. We often use our imaginations as a form of “escape” from this current life of hardship, difficulty, trial, suffering, cruelty and pain. When we come to prayer with our imaginations engaged our prayers take on this type of language as well. We mostly pray for good things, great things, remarkable things, miracles, bliss, healing and basically all things positive, glorious and wonderful. I pray this way too but I wonder, I wonder if this is all that God has in mind when he speaks to us about his will for us as immeasurable more than we could ever think or imagine? Is there a way to inform our imaginations so that what we actually dream about is saturated with what the Holy Spirit really desires for us and not so much what we want the Holy Spirit to desire for us?
Remember Peter, after Jesus had informed him of his soon coming suffering and death. Remember how he responded? Even in his wildest imaginations he could not for the life of him imagine that the Messiah would have to endure such horrible things nor should he have to. The Son of God, the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Holy One of God, most certainly would not have to go through such terrible things! In essence, his imagination was more informed by his religious culture than the words that had just come out of the Son of God’s mouth. The Son was trying to inform the disciple’s imaginations of what was truly great, what was truly positive, glorious and wonderful. Peter took offense; he took Jesus aside and in no uncertain terms told the Lord of the Universe that he shouldn’t talk like that.
I think Paul worked hard in most of his letters to debunk poorly informed imaginations about what the Christian life is all about. In what could be argued as his literary master piece, known as the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2:4-13, his writing is beautiful, poetic and dripping with powerful imagery to inform our imaginations of the true pathway to greatness, to glory, to wonder and to exaltation according to the mind of God.
When we imagine great things in the Lord, we must include this vital information about the pathway to the great things we imagine when we pray. Remember Peter? Remember what Christ said to him? Jesus responded to Peter’s rebuke with a shocking rebuke of his own, “Get behind me Satan! For you only have in mind the things of men and not the things of God!”
When we pray with our imaginations intact and engaged let us never be guilty of having only the things of men in our imaginations and not the things of God!
Let your imagination be well informed and stop trying to arm wrestle what we consider good things, great things, wonderful and positive things out of God and calling it prayer!
