One of the things we lose during times of anxiety is our imagination.
I miss those lunches at Memphis’s Caritas Village (R.I.P.) in graduate school. The founder told us that she intended the space not simply as a cafe, but as a place that celebrated art, since art was a way for children to use their God-given creativity to imagine a different way than what they had seen with their eyes. Art has a way of doing that; it unlocks the imagination that has only experienced scarcity.
Walter Brueggemann calls this the prophetic imagination. It’s when someone sees beyond the moment to envision a better way. It’s when injustices are named so that wrongs can be made right. Jesus said, “may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:10). It’s a way of dreaming.
The Bible has a tradition of dreams and visions that enable followers of God to imagine a better world. Pharaoh dreams that his empire could fall because of a famine (Gen. 41); Peter dreams that his prejudice could go away because of God’s mission to Gentiles (Acts 10:10-13). In each case, the dreamer sees beyond their limited view and gets a glimpse of God’s future purposes. Sometimes the only way God can help us to see is by closing our eyes.
White Station is spending this month in a place called Dreamland. It’s a place where we don’t get to make the rules, yet we insist on being faithful to God in all circumstances (Phil. 4:12-13). We face struggle, but we persevere. We feel torn; so we wrestle with competing values. We dream and imagine a future that far outweighs what we currently see (2 Cor. 4:16-18).
In Dreamland we are learning:
- To navigate challenges. The fact that life is hard is no excuse for losing; it’s simply an invitation to learning.
- To maintain a posture of holiness and humility rather than an attitude of hubris and hostility. When Christians defend Christ in an unchristlike way, it’s an embarrassment to the name of Jesus. So we must have a posture that would honor Jesus.
- To develop spiritual habits that sustain us. In times of anxiety, we often look beyond our own responsibility and obsess about what others should do differently. Subsequently, we also forget to pray, meditate, observe a Sabbath, take walks, and read the Scriptures. Running a marathon is hard enough, there is no reason to do it without food, water, and sleep.
Let’s do this adventure together.
Life can feel like a nightmare.
Keep dreaming.
