Cultivating Imagination

Today starts my third week at First Church and things are going well. Plans for UrbanLife continue to develop and this month I ask for your prayers as God builds the Leadership Team: 12 + me. This group will begin meeting the first of August for what I'm calling the 10:10-experience. Ten weeks of 10 practices that will create habits for cultivating the abundant life Jesus speaks of in John 10:10. Just out of curiosity, if you have a practice that you think should be one of the 10, I would be curious to hear your idea--post to the blog or email me at reverendkath@gmail.com

This morning in Sunday school, we talked about "the poor." We were given lots of statistics about poverty in America, so much so that I felt a little down towards the end of the class. It's just so complicated. Now I know why the most-often quoted verse related to poor people, according to our speaker, is the one where Jesus quotes the Hebrew Scriptures, "The poor you will always have among you." That Scripture makes it easier to let myself off the hook and not have to think so hard about the poor.

So what's the best cure for feeling overwhelmed by statistics about the poor? Follow it with a sermon about the Rich, Young Ruler. It's not really a cure, but it did convict me that it's not a choice to wrestle about the poor or about my need to consume. The spiritual life is that wrestling--it's being willing to stay in that place of discomfort and acknowledge that this isn't easy. To stay in discomfort--in our age of medicating anything slightly irritating, discomfort is not popular.

The challenge is to be in the middle of discomfort and also keep the power of imagination burning bright. There is something to that city of God, the kingdom of heaven. It is magical, transforming, inspiring and most of all, it is the story that unites us. If for 5 minutes a day, at the very least, each one of us put on our imagination caps and just imagined what life would be like in the kingdom of heaven, could we get just a little closer? Of course, the goal of meditation is stilling your outer self so that your inner self can touch the divine. What if that inner touch of divine had a magical power to transform our outer touch, and after imagining the kingdom, we become empowered to build the kingdom, literally. Build it by our forgiveness. Build it with our hope. Build it with our belief that nothing is impossible for God.