A few years ago, the Christian singing group MercyMe shared the popular song “Only Imagine” which described the eventual heavenly personal encounter with Jesus. Imagination is a very good thing to make a part of our lives.
As with the song, imagination typically takes us forward to what could be in our future. We can let faith guide us to imagine positive things like a job that we want, enough rain or cessation of rain for crops, or results in a public service election. We can also have imagination through fear to produce or sustain negative things in life, such as getting fired from a job, it raining on a field of cut hay, or the wrong political candidate winning.
Imagination tends to happen anyway through the practice of worry or hope. We can intentionally manage it for our good. The best way to do this is to dedicate some regular time to the practice of imagination. An example would be to set aside about 10 – 15 minutes daily to “imagine” and use a notebook to record what we imagine. There is a popular children’s book series on Imagination Station. It would be helpful to have such a location at our home to do our daily imagining. It might be the corner of the back porch before the rest of the family gets up. It might be a closet like in the movie The War Room. If it is a place free from distractions, we will imagine more freely.
The practice of imagination is much like that of brain-storming. Thoughts that come are processed more fully with no judgment. Just write or draw the idea in your notebook and let your mind wander to further possibilities, which you can also write or draw down as they come.
Most man-made things that we enjoy came from someone’s imagination. “Only Imagine” what could come from yours.
