Is God in their imagination?

Just imagine you are sitting on a swing at your favourite park, when Jesus comes and sits on the swing beside you…what is that like? What is He like? How does it feel when He is there like that beside you?

 Just imagine you have been playing outside in the summer sun and you are thirsty and hot. Imagine grabbing the garden hose (from the shady side of the house!) and letting the water from it gurgle and gush out all over your hair and face and into your mouth! What is it like? How does it make you feel? 

 When I begin with the phrase, ”just imagine”, I prime my audience (big or small) to experience more than just the sound of my voice. In fact I am signaling that it is not just the ears that are going to receive something, it is the heart, the mind and maybe too the body are about to go on a journey of thought with me. As you imagine with me you will probably bump into some of your own fond memories and recall some faces and places unique to you along the way and that’s all good.  When I invite you to engage your imagination I am saying that I won’t control exactly how you will see or picture everything, and that’s ok. 

Very few kids will ask how to imagine something. For them the boundaries between their external and internal, and the natural and supernatural world doesn’t exist. I am deeply envious of this!

I have also learnt that when children encounter their heavenly father on a personal level they don’t need to become ‘adult-like’ with their choice of language to describe or retell to you what they have sensed or felt. 

Instead it is more usual for children to use metaphors from childhood to tell us about what they see or hear or receive from God. 

They use language from their own rich pool of ‘life stories’ to tell their ‘God story’ encounters; drawing from favourite foods, colours, toys and outings with family or friends to express what God is like.  

 When you think about it, isn’t that what most of the Psalms sound like, full of David’s personal descriptive stories from past and present, internal and external, natural and supernatural? King David captures in his language a multi-sensory experience of a God who is equally found in thundering waterfalls as He is in gentle rain. David through remembering his time as a shepherd talks of soft green grass and brooks of bliss for sheep needing pasture, nurture and protection and food. 

There is nothing more sacred than the language that comes direct from the heart from genuine, authentic and vulnerable encounters with our Daddy God! When we resist the urge to translate or interpret their words we demonstrate trust in our children that they can experience God for themselves. I can’t think of a more important truth for everyone to grow up hearing!