Imagine

Photo by Jeremy Beck on Unsplash

Youth leader asks, ‘What is a New Year’s resolution?’

Hands up.

Answer, ‘Something you want to accomplish in the next year.’

An impressed congregation raises a collective eyebrow at the eight year old’s vocabulary skills (fist bump Maghaberry Primary School – oh yeah)

‘So who wants to share their resolution for the year? Anyone?’

Not too many of us that’s for sure!

I for one don’t really make New Year’s resolutions but if I did I wouldn’t be sharing it with my entire church family on a Sunday morning! That would be a little too much accountability for my liking.

However, I have been contemplating my #oneword2018 - a single word that I can carry into the year with me and keep in my pocket throughout the seasons. Last year, I carried HOPE with me. I watched for it constantly and I found it everywhere. Of course I have an actual pebble that says hope that I can literally put in my pocket if I wish and I’m by no means setting it down but this year, my one word is going to be IMAGINE.

What do I imagine is going to happen this year?

What do I imagine God is going to do in my life, in me?

What do we imagine he is going to do in our churches?

What do we imagine he might do in our families, in our streets, in our country?

Imagine what God is doing in this world!

‘God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!’ Ephesians 3:20 (The Message)

Dare we start the year by imagining what God could do or are we too afraid that if we imagine too much, we’ll be setting ourselves up for disappointment and our faith will end up broken along with all our New Year resolutions?

I was given a gift recently by a friend, a book that unbeknownst to her, had been on my ‘would love to own’ list for quite a while. In it are these words of a favourite poet of mine, Luci Shaw.

‘It came to me, recently, that faith is ‘a widening of the imagination’. When Mary asked the Angel, “How shall these things be?” she was asking God to widen her imagination.

We can stand beside Mary at the start of this year and ask with the same holy wonder, can it be possible? Could it be?

We can ask God to widen our own imagination and believe the reply of verse 37 in Luke Chapter 1.

‘Nothing, you see, is impossible with God.’

And with the expansion of our spiritual imagination we will be able, like Mary, to turn away from all the other voices that tell us who we are, who we are meant to be and what the purpose of our lives is and listen only to the voice of the One who has wild dreams for us and for our future.

#daretoimagine.