Imagine.

I believe one of our greatest spiritual abilities as human beings is to imagine.

No other creature on the planet has this very unique attribute of God himself, and is part of what makes us Divine image bearers.  My two dogs do not wake up in the morning thinking up a future worth giving their life to.  My son’s goldfish doesn’t contemplate what he will create with the few glorious days she is gifted on this earth.  Only humans have that capacity.

We dream up communities and create them.  We innovate and change how global systems operate.  We have a vision for the impact our life will make and then go engage the world with the full power of God within us.  

That ability to dream up a future and create it is part of what fuels our deep-rooted spiritual instinct to hope.  We never stop imagining, therefore we never stop hoping.  At a base level, it is what pushes us to get out of bed in the morning.  In full force, our hope becomes the substance that transforms every corner of the Globe.    

While we never stop imagining, that gift can easily be hijacked.  How quickly can we shift from dreaming of a profound future to creating a nightmare within us?  Anxiety and despair are simply us using our imagination to envision a dark and broken tomorrow that hasn’t yet been created. 

We imagine us losing everything and being left without.  We dream up all sorts of betrayals, letdowns and pain.  We star to perceive all sorts of vulnerabilities and inadequacies that could one day be our downside. 

And we do what we always do. 
We dream, then create.     

How are you using your divine gift of imagination?  Are you allowing yourself to dream up a future that is informed by the very mind of God himself or being held captive by an imagination that is rapidly inventing a future filled with hopelessness and despair?  Either way, that is your inheritance. 

 Imagine well.