On Imagination, Wonder and the Reality

The bigger your bucket list, the bigger your imagination has proven to be. As it is right now, were money no object, my bucket list is enough to keep me going until I am in my mid-90’s. Like Seuss’ classic tale of imagining the places you’ll go, I often travel, in the comfortable fog of my dreams at night, to the most exotic of places, some of which probably do not exist at all; undoubtedly they are the offspring of my active and full-color imagination given free rein while my body does the slumber thing. My favorite bit of imagineering, to borrow a phrase from Disney, is the one about the large retreat center for ministers and missionaries, one set aside specifically for those in the clergy and their families who need a place of recovering, restoration, re-centering — an escape in order to heal emotionally and spiritually. Here I won’t burden you with all the fine tuning details which have marched across my mind. Suffice it to say the dream is one of a really big, green, lush place, slightly secluded, a haven where families can reconnect, where ministry marriages are able to shed the weight and the distance too often marking such relationships. And yes, there is a board of directors, the center is a non-profit place, and it is simply called “The Refuge.” Nothing pretentious, nothing overly dramatic — just a promise that in that place one can have the opportunity to journey towards wholeness.

Don’t offer to send donations — the place only exists in the mental bucket list. Pulling off something like that would cost a whole lot more dollars than I have ever seen in my entire life. But, like my beloved wife reminds me, dreams are free. Many have been the dreams, the flights of imagination soaring above whatever is the reality of the moment. There have been dreams of building big church structures, dreams of traveling to countries now, to me, no more than a splash of color on a world map, dreams of being a theological academic, dreams of having a library three times the size it is now (and a low-light, wood-paneled study  in which to enjoy them, with overstuffed chairs and ottomans, with room on the shelves for the latest acquisitions), dreams of being able to revisit all the places my military time took me (especially Germany), dreams of a romantic cruise with my beloved — and dozens more, some small, some bigger, some best left in the happy caverns of the mind.

Sometimes, in the middle of doing something important, such as studying for the Sunday message, I will see a word that triggers a memory, have a thought, a phrase tickling the imagination awake. Instead of buckling down to parse the Greek and understand authorial intent, I am headed off to some off-beat, far-flung destination, achieving stuff never  before done in my life, and maybe never will. With a grouch and a growl, I chide myself for the flight of fancy, the waste of valuable time, focusing in one more time on the reality needing attention — and a little sad the trip through thought-land was nothing more than my overly rambunctious imagination.

Spare time moments, when working in my wood shop is impractical, are often consumed with fictional writing. Over the years this has resulted in several book-length manuscripts, with politicians, law men and women, bad guys, also rans and strange characters of dark and dubious origins, were they real. Plot, character development, action, continual flow — it’s all there, twenty-plus chapters or more, printed off, bound in a three-ring notebook, labeled and put on a shelf, out of the way, something that allowed me to play out the imagination a little, have a good time doing, and seeing something to show for it, even if my wife is about the only one who ever reads the novels. Years ago, I wrote a book for her, in the same genre and type of setting as C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It took me years to finish it, and when I finally came to the last word and punctuation, the print copy became a Christmas present for her. She was thrilled with it, enjoyed it quite a bit, and has for a number of years pressed me to write a sequel. It’s been so long I would have to read the manuscript again were I to entertain such a project. There is no expectation anyone else would want to read what I write, although the Kindle edition of one attempt has had a few who liked it. Those novels are cathartic, perhaps, the path to letting some of the imagined ideas in my head find some shape and identity. Lat month I completed one I had begun in 2016. Now I have an idea running amok in my head about the next writing project. My imagination has the outline all but settled, ready to be changed through the labor of actually writing and giving some literary life to the characters.

There is one place, however, about which I do not allow my imagination to display across my consciousness. I don’t want to get myself into some kind of self-made expectation that will probably be so far amiss when compared to the reality. I can wait for what this place is supposed to be, for it will be grand on its own.

That place is heaven.

Jesus said He was going to prepare a place for us, and He would come again to get us (John 14). He didn’t describe the place, often translated as “mansion” or “mansions”, but best left in the slightly nebulous “place”. If Jesus has prepared this place, I doubt seriously whether even a hemi-equipped imagination is going to have any idea of how wonderful such a place is going to be. Besides, heaven is not my prime objective. Being with Jesus is, spending time with Jesus is, worshiping and praising Him is. While all of that post-rapture or post-mortem stuff happens in heaven, I’m not jazzed that heaven is the place; what moves me, often to tears, is the knowledge that someday I will see Him just as He is. Someday I will have the privilege of being in the same immediate space as the Savior. Heaven will be great, of course, but Jesus outshines even the best that heaven, as a place, has to offer.

Sure, I’ve seen artistic attempts to portray the heavenly realms, using bright colors mimicking golden hues and unfiltered sunshine. One such effort had  a family dressed like they were going to church (and this was the early 1970’s, so put the dad in a suit with a white shirt and necktie, and imagine what the rest of the bubbly family looked like) across a lush, green meadow with flowers scattered here and there, and trees which had never known a windy day or a bark boring beetle. Another such illustration had heaven resembling the Rocky Mountains, while yet one more had poofy clouds for the floor and halo-ringed souls wandering hither and thither.

I suspect nothing that winds up on canvas or in an image file is anything like what heaven really is, and I doubt none of those who are Christians really are all that concerned whether the streets are 24K gold or there isn’t a need for heat, cold, or food. Or at least they shouldn’t be so concerned. The Bible never tells us to get all in a dither about going to heaven but it does have some great exhortations about seeing Jesus, about being ready to see the One who suffered, died and was resurrected for the sake of a sinful humanity. I really wouldn’t care if heaven were in an old Army quonset hut as long as Jesus is inside that hut, ready to receive those who died in faith or were caught away in the parousia, who have now come to that which was promised to those who endure to the end.  I do wonder what it it going to be like, but find contentment in knowing the wonder will someday be a reality.

That retreat center will probably get bigger, more ornate, more complicated, and stay safe as it will all remain in some mental construction zone bumping about in my imagination. But heaven — but Jesus — is divinely promised to His people, and never once has God ever failed to make good on a promise.

He’s never failed before, He’s not going to fail now. And that’s no imagination.