“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Is 55:9
We can’t see very well. Our vision is dim. Our sight is limited. But the capacity to see beyond sight is essential to the life of faith…
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Heb 11:1
You have to see beyond your sight… How do you do that? It is in the partnership of Revelation + Reason + Imagination that we “see beyond our sight”.
The Narnia books are an imaginary story about real life. In it the Emperor beyond the sea created a land called Narnia through his son, the great lion named Aslan. Narnia is filled with talking creatures of every kind, and had come under a spell from the White Witch making it “always winter, but never Christmas.” Ancient prophecies, however, speak of four human children who will come to Narnia and sit on the four empty thrones at the great castle. When they do, the reign of the White Witch will end. And so, much to their surprise, the four Pevensie children, who have been sent by their mother from wartime London to the safety of a countryside manor owned by a Professor, are playing hide and seek one day, and they stumble into the magical land or Narnia through a door in the back of a wardrobe. And so the adventure begins.
Why would Lewis be more famous for these books than for all his other great works? Because he tapped into one of God’s greatest gifts, the gift of imagination. I want to start our series with a couple thoughts on why God would give us the gift of imagination.
Imaginative stories were Jesus’ preferred method of teaching. Matt 13 is full of stories about seeds being sown, large catches of fish, buried treasure, and pearls of great price. Why teach like this? Because it is easy to remember? Certainly. But also because in appealing to the imagination he was awakening people’s God given capacity to see farther and reach deeper.
That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it. Matt 13:13 (The Message)
Your imagination is a great gift of God, and it is essential to the power of truth and the life of faith.
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