Is Your Imagination of God Starved?
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens Isaiah 40:26 ESV
The people of God in Isaiah’s day had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright. Nature to a saint is sacramental. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realise it.
The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in darkness. If your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse yourself, take the gibe that Isaiah gave the people, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.
One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God. We have to learn how to be broken bread and poured-out wine on the line of intercession more than on the line of personal contact. Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he never was in.
Chambers, Oswald (2011-05-01). My Utmost for His Highest, Classic Edition (pp. 29-30). Discovery House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Educators are bemoaning the loss of imagination and creativity in our current crop of school children. The ability/willingness of kids to make up games, write without a prompt, and think outside the box is slowly being eroded not only by schools, but society as well. Xboxes have replaced cardboard boxes. Direct TV has replaced hide and seek. Standardized testing has trumped creative writing.
In a now famous study, a group of kindergartners were asked to think of all the possible ways to use a paperclip. As kindergarten students, the scores ranged in the "genius" level for divergent thinking. However, when that the same group of students were tested at different times in their scholastic career, their scores on this "test" were lower each time. What this and other students have shown is that as we get older, our willingness to use our imagination declines.
In Matthew 18:3, Christ tells his disciples, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Perhaps we need to revert to our childhood awe and imagination when coming before the throne of God. Let's look at the night sky with wonder. Let's once again become enthralled with a spring flower. Let's dance with joy in a spring rain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Paperclip discussion at approx. 8 minutes into the video.
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