Ok, firstly I strongly suggest you read the picture I put here. It's from the book mentioned below.
When I was little, I used to really enjoy
drawing. I would even take pictures from disney cartoons in magazines and draw
them with chalk on a board for weeks at a time. It was my own world and my
imagination having a field day in it's own form of art. I would get into my own
little creations. Do you remember when you were little, and you used to draw
pictures? You wouldn't just draw the pictures, though. You would be talking to
them, and interacting with them, making them come alive in your imagination as
you drew.
As I grew older, people started telling me
what good art was, and what bad art was. Unfortunately my pictures never ever ever
ever made the good art category (not sure I have enough 'evers' memorized there). I even tried taking the subject in grade 8 and
grade 9. I remember spending hours on a drawing of an elephant using 'stippling',
and the teacher gave me 60%, and then I spent ten minutes drawing an orange, and
got the exact same grade. My imagination was killed. It had been weighed through comparisons with others, and fallen short. I don't think I've drawn anything other
than doodles since grade 9. This was something I really enjoyed doing, something
that gave my imagination an outlet that I enjoyed, but because I was told it
wasn't something that other people enjoyed, I gave it up. What other aspects of my imagination have been killed like this??!
Reading a fascinating (and CRAZY) book*
lately has taught me something really interesting. Imagination is so important!
It's something everyone does when they're little, but stops doing at some stage
in life. I remember when I used to believe that my stuffed animal toys were
alive, and I could even hear them breathing. Then I was taught that the animal
was made out of cotton and nylon. It was no longer able to breathe. Slowly, but
surely, our imaginations are laid down in the trunk with all our old toys, and
all we're left with is logic and cynicism**.
I believe being a child of God requires a
lot of imagination. It's something He created, and something He longs to use.
I'm not just talking about being in the creative stream of ministry, I'm talking
about serving God. Right now I can imagine the streets of Sao Paulo where the
kids have stopped running away from their parents to form gangs and sell drugs.
I can imagine the country of Brazil being a place where the poverty isn't horded
by the rich. I can imagine being a role model and even an inovator of many
programs to bring love to the street kids of Sao Paulo. But what would I have
been able to imagine if my mind hadn't been streamlined into our "grown up" way
of life?
I can imagine a group of people loving God
and pursuing Him with the imagination that He equipped them with. I can imagine
Him backing up their imaginitive ideas with practical applications, and I can
imagine a world where the love of God becomes tangible to the people of the
world through His own Body of believers because they dared to live with a
different mindset.
*
** If I were to ask you what state of being was most detrimental to the longevity of humans, most of us would venture a guess at stress or anger. However, I heard a specialist on the radio say that cynicism takes off more years of our lives than anything else. Fascinating. Makes you think we were made to live a life as people who forgive others shortfalls.