WATCHWORD:
Teach me your ways, oh Lord, I will walk in your truth. Psalm 86:11
Meditation:
Where’s Your Imagination?
Where’s your imagination? Are you in love with Bora-Bora, Fiji, or perhaps your taste runs more toward Nantucket Island, or maybe the prairies of Wyoming, or the food of Italy. What are your preferences, and how were they shaped? Did you imagine yourself as a detective solving the most difficult of cases. Maybe you imagine yourself in a Hallmark romance.
A skillful writer can make us feel like we have entered the very heart and lives of some very interesting people. Sometimes it’s so vivid that we add what we have read or seen to the sum total of what we call our experience or our preferences.
J.B. Philips, in his book “Your God Is Too Small”, makes this observation how we borrow vicarious elements and call them our own: “The process is almost entirely automatic and probably most of us would be greatly shocked if it could suddenly be revealed to us how small a portion of our accumulated knowledge of the world is due to first-hand observation and experience.”
You could almost make a case that our concept of God and His character is shaped largely by the conclusions we draw from our own practical life experiences. Therefore, if our knowledge of life, as we know it, is warped, faulty, biased, or sentimental, we are likely to find ourselves with a secondhand god who is quite different from God.
Here’s a cockeyed idea that I’ve been kicking around for a while. I’ve said this before, but I think some people let religion get in the way of their worship of the Lord. There is something very limiting about our language and the words we use to communicate what we believe. Words like saved, born-again, resurrection, all have deep meaning for believers, who understand the concept and the context. But for some, maybe even loved ones in your family, those ideas, those words, those concepts can be turnoffs because they don’t share that understanding.
I’m aware that a vast amount of the fiction that is presented to us as a life, too often has no God in it at all, no faith side to their personalities. They may be charming and caring, have courage beyond belief, all without the slightest reference to God. Conversely, the evil characters that we may read about never seem to suffer the slightest tentative conscience, or consequence, and the reader may conclude God does nothing to influence bad characters.
Now in actual life, any thinking person, even some with evil intent, does, at times, consider God and spiritual issues. The adversities, the tensions and crises which are the realities of life often lead us back to a kind of latent spiritual or faith-based sense that might erupt with: “Jesus, help me!”
Where are we in all of this? I think too often I place my faith on the back burner, handy, just in case I need it, but not always applying to a current situation. Too often those faults that I incur are the ones that I bring and lay at the foot of the cross in my morning hours. How about you? Do you have a first-hand faith, one that is brand-new with the dawn of each day? May it be so to you, to me.
Closing Prayer:
Lord, you give me wisdom. From your mouth come knowledge and understanding. You hold victory in store for the upright. You are a shield to those whose walk is blameless. You guard the course of the just and protect the way of your faithful ones. Enable me to understand what is right, just, and fair — every good path. Allow wisdom to enter my heart. May discretion protect me and understanding guard me all the days of my life. Amen
