Our Chief Imagination

I am reflecting on a thought that has been gripping my mind and musings for a few days now. A revelation that has certainly crossed my path before, and yet I either wasn't paying close attention as I should or I just didn't give it the time to work itself into my deepest interior.

We study those who have kindled our imaginations and set the course of writing for centuries. From the beginning of the written word, we study those authors, who inspire us. However, our chief imagination as Christians is not a loved author of the past. It's not Shakespeare, or Donne, or Milton, or Dostoevsky. It is Christ himself. 

Christ is the one who sparks our imaginations. He tries to get us to think. Jesus tells stories and prompts us to imagine the kingdom of heaven through those stories.

I feel like I could dwell in all the examples of this for a few months at least - Christ as the chief imagination. He was, after all, human, so he had the brain we have which was made to create and imagine. He used his own knowledge of the heavenly realm to reveal little snippets for us, to stretch our own thinking to an eternal perspective.

I am reading through Mark at the moment, and Jesus is talking with his disciples about the feeding of the four thousand they had just witnessed, and how Jesus had made much out of the little they had, fruitfully multiplying that small amount faithfully given, but they don't seem to understand. He says to them:

Do you have eyes and not see, do you have ears and not hear?

Don't you understand yet?

Mark 8.18, 21

Jesus is trying to get them to pay attention. To think. To use their imaginations. What is the heavenly kingdom like? I imagine Jesus saying - Well, imagine such a meager amount of food given in faith and love, and think about how I expanded it to nourish and be a blessing to others. Now how could that be translated to your present day as a way of building God's kingdom here on earth?

I search all the writings and books of the old writers of centuries past who embrace imagination as a truth bearing torch, and newer writers of our present day who aim for the same. I seek all the deep meditations of poetic imagination and thinking deeply on meaningful creative ventures. And here is Jesus, the master of it all! 

I love that Jesus encouraged the use of imagination as it was given to us all for a reason! Perhaps to help us get a tiny grasp of what the kingdom of God is like. For that requires a lot of imagination on our part.