Imagine

2…IMAGINE

As well as being Jesus' physical forbears, the Hebrews and their Scriptures in which they reveal so much of themselves – sometimes more of themselves than their God -   are Jesus’ spiritual forbears, and therefore ours, too. Their Hebrew Bible, our O.T. is recommended reading if we're to understand the world into which and the people from whom Jesus springs and an indispensable introduction to His life and the Gospels that record Him for us. In similar fashion we can then better read the rest of the N.T. if we read it as an extension of the Gospels as the Gospels are, in Christian eyes, an extension from the O.T. Everyone and everything’s connected to everyone and everything else when it comes to both Scripture and life. To go a little further down that same track of building on what goes before like the Prophets, Jesus himself, and then his followers do, British Rabbi Lionel Blue encourages us to identify ‘small s' scriptures' of our own, on-going chapters drawn from experiences of daily life to look at in the light of the received Scriptures. [1]. 

If Faith and Imagination are inextricably related as many believe [2] together they can  bring us alive to the Scriptures and the Scriptures alive to us. As we recognize our-selves in their stories. Try thinking of the characters in them as our own spiritual 'rellies' if not strictly speaking physical ones. Don’t recognize the shape of a chin? A nose? Or an ear? Then what about their same strengths and weaknesses, their same foibles? Or the similar skeletons to the ones in our own cupboards? Or the same good, bad, and indifferent judgements we make?

Let’s not think about these old 'rellies' of ours as just names set in type in a book; even The Book! Actually, Books, a whole library of them! Nor figures sculpted in stone or bronze, painted on walls or canvases, illuminated in manuscripts, cut from stained glass and set into church windows. Our Forbears in Faith live on as Real People so long as we keep telling their stories. They are of the earth, earthy, as the second version of the creation tales [GEN 2:7] spells out poetically, though not always of heaven, heavenly.  (I’ll bracket key scriptural references like this [ ] from now on. See Blog 3 for more about how to use Bible references if you need help in this.

Armed with the same gifts of creative imagination God gives those who come alive to ‘Him’ in these stories from of old we are capable of making great leaps of faith in our day like the best of them make by God's grace in theirs. Try thinking of their God stories, those records of the spiritual journeys they make in their day, as a kind of spiritual GPS for us in our day. [3]

Godly Imagination is long overdue recognition as a 'Gift of the Spirit' even if Blessed Paul (whose sandals I readily admit I’m not fit to untie!) didn't have the imagination to include it in his great lists. But that’s another story…

[1] Day Trips to Eternity, D.L.T., London, 1987, p.xiv. [2] e.g. Fr. Matthew Fox and Bp. John V. Taylor. [3] We owe them all, story-tellers, poets, troubadours, prophets, teachers, historians, law-makers, saints, and sinners a great debt.