When I was young, my little brother and I would play with miniature tractors on the dining room carpet. We would plant our corn and soybeans and then harvest them all in the course of a few minutes, much faster and more efficient than Dad could do it. We imagined that we were farmers. We would line up all of our equipment along the edge of the carpet and tell mom about how good the crops had done or how something had broken down that we needed to fix. When I was older and given more responsibility on the farm, I realized that what I had imagined as a child was starkly different than the daily realities of farming.
When we are young, we imagine without consideration of reality, without consideration of what actually could happen or is happening. We imagine whole worlds and experiences in moments, exploring the possibilities of our interests and fascinations. As we grow older and more “mature,” our life experiences often drive that sense of wonder and imagination far from our awareness, deep into our memory. We begin to associate childhood imagination with being out of touch, with pipe dreams and wishes. As adults, we create more sophisticated words for imagination so that we do not sound disconnected. We use words like vision, opportunity, idea, revelation, prospect, visualization, or concept as ways of distancing ourselves from childhood fancies and dreams.
Last week, I asked you to dare to imagine something more, and I do mean “dare.” Great risk comes with imagination, with sacrificing what is for what could be. We risk disappointment, never seeing our ideas or imaginings pan out and then wondering if we have wasted all of that time and energy. We risk looking childish or immature when we invest our resources in things that might appear impossible. We risk being ridiculed or criticized for thinking that more is possible, that our personal, communal, and global human experience is more complex than what is reasonable, rational, or logical. We risk claiming that God has called us to something impossible and wondering, after it has not worked out, whether God was in it at all or if we had misunderstood or misheard. As Mennonites in a world that can seem anything but peaceful, we believe that God has called us to be peacemakers, finding creative nonviolent solutions to what seem to be intractable or impossible situations or conflicts. Each Advent season, we explore and imagine the possibilities of hope, peace, joy, and love as we long for the coming of Messiah, Jesus. Like little farmers on the dining room carpet, we imagine the impossible because we believe that the God of Israel did what seemed impossible so long ago in becoming a human being like us, for us, and with us.
The above article was published in the Courier, our local Freeman newspaper, on December 9, 2021 here: https://newzgroup.com/SDArchive/455053/2021-12-08/455053_12.09_.21FC_.Page13A_.pdf
You can check out the Courier website here: https://www.freemansd.com/
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