What do you imagine? A better job, a better house, more money, perhaps a vacation in the South Pacific? We all let our imagination run away with us from time to time. Some of our greatest inventions and highest achievements are the result of someone's imagination soaring to impossible heights. Some of our greatest failures and basest sins are the result of the same. It all depends on where we allow our imagination to take us.

Being a Christian takes a lot of imagination. The writers of the Bible continually call us to use it. For instance, the Prophet Isaiah encouraged the people of his day to "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name" (Isaiah 40:26). Isaiah paints word pictures for us, and our minds begin to imagine. In his devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says Isaiah made the people "begin to use their imagination aright."

He says ? "In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us, if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it."

Chambers? premise is that our imaginations are starved of the things of God. We focus so much on all the other imaginings that we miss the inspiration that is around us every day.

We're imagining our bank accounts growing, while nature displays its riches in a sunset. We're imagining how great we?ll look in that new dress, while the snow falls and makes the world look new. We're imagining the new car we?ll get when we're promoted, while the wind sings songs in the trees. When our imagination keeps us focused on ourselves, on our needs and desires, we become blind to what God wants to show us. When we look for Him, we are stimulated by what is around us and our thoughts turns to God. We see him in everything we look at, in every turn of events, and we begin to know Him.

He has put himself on display for us. All we have to do is look, use a little imagination, and turn to Him. The Apostle Paul refers to this as taking "every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10:5). Our imagination will try to run away on us, and it usually leads to places that starve our soul. It takes an act of the will to bend the imagination toward God, to turn our thoughts away from ourselves.

What do you imagine?

Marcia Laycock is a pastor's wife and freelance writer living in Alberta Canada.  Her devotional book, The Spur of the Moment has been endorsed by Janette Oke, Phil Callaway and others.  To order, and to view more of Marcia's writing, see her web site - www.vinemarc.com
Copyright Marcia Lee Laycock, 2000, 2001,2002,2003,2004,2005