I love the way God’s Spirit allows for the slow, steady convergence of ideas that find a place in the imagination.
As I sit in one of my favorite coffee shops, my imagination plays with thoughts about creativity and beauty, the inspiration of the natural world, the potential for creativity God has bestowed upon his image bearers, and the power of imagination itself.
I’m reading Exodus, and this morning was struck by this piece of history:
The first thing God’s people Israel did when they had crossed the Red Sea and watched their Egyptian enemies be utterly destroyed was to SING.
They didn’t march, debrief, yell, hold a meeting, build an altar, or make a sacrifice. That would all come later. No, Miriam and the women grabbed their tambourines and began spontaneously composing a boisterous, danceable song of praise. Here is the opening line:
“The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”
A bit further in, Miriam exhorts the people,
Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. (Ex. 15:21)
Miriam’s boldness brings me to the irrefutable conclusion that our imaginations are God’s gift for responding to him. No matter what is happening externally, we can pull from within us a creative response focused on God.
David, one of the Lord’s favorite psalmists, wrote:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple”(Ps. 27:40).
Can’t you see David alone in God’s house, with a harp in his hand and a parchment on the floor next to him? He gazes, waits, and listens, asking, “What do you want me to create today to tell the world how wonderful you are? Use my imagination to bring glory to you.”
Oswald Chambers addresses this in My Utmost for His Highest. He writes:
Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him…Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in Nature—the sunrises and sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination will never be at the mercy of your impulses but will always be at the service of God.
You may think that you are not a creative (this has been turned into a noun if you didn’t know). Maybe you don’t write, paint, sculpt, dance, or design things. No matter.
If you are human, and especially if you are a human filled with the Holy Spirit, you have a creative mandate to express how God and his beauty transform your imagination.
Oswald laments that many of us are so focused on other things, or even idols (God forbid!) that we miss out on the never-ending opportunity to focus on God and express our fascination with him.
If you doubt the importance of focusing the imagination on God, consider the consequence for Lucifer when he focused his imagination on himself and his own beauty instead (Ez. 28:17).
Elizabeth Gilbert is a contemporary writer who celebrates the power of imagination:
Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.
A couple of years ago Gilbert’s book Big Magic inspired and motivated me to pay attention to moments of inspiration. Gilbert doesn’t frame this in Christian terms, but I do, of course. In my artistic theology, the Holy Spirit scans the landscape for a human partner to join with him to express the beauty or wisdom of God. If I am paying attention, I might be the right candidate.
I imagine it this way. Some days (not all days) I’m able to put myself in a posture of openness to his creative inspiration. My heart is free, undistracted, and expectant.
He sees me and that I am available to partner with him. He drops an idea, and I catch it. I run to a guitar or to a blank page to capture it while it is fresh and alive. I must act immediately or it will get lost in the endless flow of consciousness.
If I’m not available on a given day because my focus is elsewhere, he will move on to another willing participant. Maybe it was their turn. If I receive the seed of inspiration, but get distracted and procrastinate, the seed won’t sprout and grow. It stays buried in darkness.
This is a shame, but is forgivable. I know he forgives my misses because as soon as I return my focus to him again, he tosses another idea down to me. His mercies are new each day. Aren’t you grateful that each day we get another shot at it?
God is generous, almost careless with his ideas and inspirations, because he never, ever runs out of ideas and inspiring things to say. I pray (while mixing metaphors), that he continues to pour into all of us, and tip us over to pour out in whatever context he chooses.
I’ll end with one final encouragement from Oswald Chambers, which I take to heart and offer you in his behalf:
If you have never used your imagination to put yourself before God, begin to do it now….put your imagination away from the face of idols and look unto Him.
