by a Pioneer in Southeast Asia

Come with me into a village where our organization built and now operates a new Christian school. Can you see those children perched on that roughly hewn wooden porch? Notice they don’t have any toys. Now let’s move closer. It’s wet season, so be careful. You’ll need to take off your shoes and slog through the mud. With every step, your toes squish in garbage and human waste that’s been dropped into the muck. Go ahead, climb onto that porch, muddy feet and all. Sit with them, if you can stand the stench. It’ll take a minute for them to get over their fear of you. Don’t mind the flies, even the ones crawling on their lips and eyelashes.

Tell me, what do you see in their eyes? Most of these children are doing just fine. They’re content. Feel free to ask about their dreams, but don’t be surprised at the confused expressions on their faces. It has never crossed most of their minds that they might want to escape this place or somehow make it healthier, cleaner, prettier, or safer. This is like their day at the office. It is their daily grind. You might wonder, Why don’t they at least clear away some of the garbage under their feet? They don’t even seem to see it! They have no idea how deeply they are embedded in poverty. They feel at home in a condition that we consider sub-human.

How can two people look in the same direction and see such different realities? The dissonance is so awkward. I sometimes even feel a twinge of guilt. I am no smarter than them, and I am certainly not better!

Ah, but there are differences between us:

I have walked through Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. I’ve driven a car through the Canadian Rockies in July. I’ve gone to the fridge for a glass of clean, pure water. I’ve rushed my children to the hospital when they were mysteriously ill. I’ve slept in a bed. I’ve experienced what it feels like for God to set me free from the inside out. I’ve seen God breathe new life into my marriage when my wife and I were struggling and feeling hopeless. These memories remain in me, and they are a part of my consciousness. In this place, they rise within me, stirring me with hope. Images of God’s grace are rooted within my imagination, and in yours.

As children, imagination caused fear of monsters in our closets. Even now, we sometimes hear imaginary thieves creeping in our houses at night. We easily conjure up enemies at the office and misread the motives of others. Yes, our imaginations can be dangerous. So why has God designed us with this ability to see what is not really there? Does imagination play a role in responding to the lot we find ourselves in? Does an activated imagination affect whether we rise up and break through our muddy conditions of slavery and paralysis?

Listen to the Spirit of God hovering over these filthy children. He’s whispering, “I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I will put into the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.” (Isaiah 41:18-20)

Now, open your eyes once again to the scene before you. Smell the rancid garbage in the mud. In this sublime moment, cedars and acacia, olives and pines rise in defiant revolt against the wasteland. This dissonance between our ideals and our present reality sparks the creative process and moves God’s warriors of faith into action.

What might happen if you dared to imagine problems solved, the poor served, beggar children rescued, and neighbors being loved into the kingdom of God? When I dare to meditate on these things, I rarely sleep well, and neither will you. But be assured. A bold imagination accelerates our creativity, and launches static faith into motion.