Blessings, Imagined and Real

I'm thinking about the liability of my imagination this morning.

Sure it's a gift and a bountiful one at that. But it seems to me that it can also get in the way. Particularly in the area of God's blessings. Here's my train of thought: I can spend a lot of time imagining how I would like God to bless me. And for me, because my power of visualization is so overdeveloped, thinking about how I'd like my life rearranged can easily segue into long moments wasted daydreaming about how good things would be, if only.

I'm sure you're familiar with if only.

Not too long ago, the Hewlett Packard Corporation ran an advertising campaign under the rubric "What if?" The genius of this slogan is immense, because HP didn't have to actually claim as reality any of the things they were describing or depicting in their ads. And, in fact, most of the ideas remain very elusive in the computing world: seamless communication between different machines, unbridled power to express your creativity. I'm sure the same kinds of images are employed under their latest ads as well.

But "What if?" begged us to dream. To imagine what was possible if only we were to purchase one of these shiny new trinkets of technology.

I don't know about you, but as an over-spoiled American consumer, I don't need the slightest bit of encouragement to dream about the possibilities. Or, more to the point, as someone securely fitted with a fallen human nature, I don't need the help of any corporate marketing department in order to wile away a few hours thinking about how much better my life would be if only.

A few days ago at lunch time, my son was seated with his friends around our kitchen table eating mac and cheese. They were freshly invigorated from a morning of intense pretending, interspersed with PBS programming downstairs in our basement. So even as Caleb was partaking of the literal blessings of a genuine, kid-approved lunch, his mind was still reeling in the imagination space that I vividly remember being such an immense part of my own childhood. So I wasn't the least surprised to hear him announce shortly after they had said their prayer for the food, "Let's pray that Jesus will give us the power to jump into a book!"

You have to understand that he was referring to the mantra of a super-hero clad cartoon boy named "Super Why" who, on the public television show by the same title, solves his friend's problems by reading classic children's stories. Only in their world, when they want to get "into a book" they really do, by donning their superhero costumes and teleporting into the land of imagination.

What makes the overheard moment from Friday's lunch so memorable, though, was that moments after uttering this admonition, Caleb further suggested, "Let's pray to Jesus... And Santa Clause!"

Hmmm. Maybe my five year-old is onto something there. At least he must have sensed that Jesus wasn't going to answer a prayer for an imaginary blessing! For that, he needed to invoke an imaginary benefactor. I could wish that he realized the frivolity of praying for something he saw in a televised cartoon; but more likely he quickly surveyed the miracles he had read in the gospels, the stories he had heard in Sabbath school, plus the prayers his mother and I had modeled over the inaugural years of his life, and concluded that Jesus just wasn't into such things.

In any case, it got me to thinking about the blessings I'm hoping for. Real or imaginary? I ask myself.

In my Bible reading this morning, David pours out his petitions to God in Psalm 59. Once again, David is addressing the issue of his many mortal enemies. I thought for a moment that maybe he shouldn't be so worried about the threats around him, but then I read the italicized introduction printed above the opening verse: "To the Chief Musician. Set to 'Do Not Destroy.' A Michtam of David when Saul sent men, and they watched the house in order to kill him."

OK. So David really did have something to worry about. And I realize that much more is at stake than David merely thinking how much better things would be for him if God would "consume them in wrath" and "let them know that God rules in Jacob..." (verse 13) His very life and livelihood hang in the balance. And woven in and through these feelings is David's sanctified zeal for God's great name to be honored by the nations surrounding him and by his own nation.

While pondering David's dilemmas, I began to think about the situations I would change if I could press the right combination of keys on the vending machine of heaven. Wouldn't my life be so much better if only God would take care of a few things down here to my liking?

But then the Holy Spirit suggests this to my mind: that things can only get really better when we ask God to take care of things to His liking. Or, expressed in the genre of my musings this morning, maybe I ought to be praying more realistic prayers. Prayers I know Jesus would really love to hear, full of petitions I know He would love me to ask of Him. Maybe more prayers about what blessings God imagines for the real people He's watching over 24-7. (Food for dying orphans and shelter for homeless refugees?) In humility, I conclude that at the very least I need a massive change of heart in order to be praying more according to the mind of Christ than in the spirit of my overactive imagination.

Or, I guess I could always cc: Santa, just in case.

My God!

Read Psalm 63 this morning and didn't make it past the first half of the first line before having a thought to share. Here's the text: "O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You;" (NKJV)

The point for consideration is this: what a privilege it is to be able to say, "O God" and what a different thing it is altogether to be able to say "You are my God!" In fact, four times in Psalms does David juxtapose these two, most notably in Psalm 43:4, "Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And on the harp I will praise You, O God, my God." All of these references are in the context of praise and most are in direct connection to the sanctuary, God's dwelling place and also the place where, on earth, these two expressions merge into one: "O God" and "My God." (The remaining two of the four are in Psalm 68:24 and 71:12.)

These two expressions feature the two most impressive dimensions of God's character. First, that He simply IS and as such is THE AUTHOR of all things. Genesis 1:1 makes no apologies for the existence of God, nor does it try to explain it or, more impossibly, Him. But His very nature throughout Genesis 1 is encapsulated in the divine name employed by Moses: "Elohim." This is a reflection of the omnipotent, the majestic, the completely other. It is God in the plural or rather the divine plural as He is everywhere all the time and is Himself three-in-one. It is the name employed by the Genesis chronicler when God declares, "Let us make man in Our image" and indeed He made us plural as well, "male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:27)

And so is hinted that even in the ultimately transcendent nature of God there is relationship. Such didn't arise merely when God had man to communicate with. God had already the perfect communion within Himself as Father, Son and Spirit. But once He does have His very nature reflected in one of His own creations, men and women, He is known by them as "Yaweh-Elohim," or "Lord God" as is employed from Genesis 2:4-25, the second telling of the creation account from the now unique perspective of life on earth.

It is this wonderful connection of transcendence and relationship that David celebrates when he pens, "Oh God, You are my God." But when one considers the corpus of the entire treasury of the Psalms, one senses that such is not taken for granted by the Psalmist. A third reference to this couplet occurs in Psalm 71:12 where David exclaims, "O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!" We want God near us, but the very God we need in such times is the All Powerful and Majestic, who can not only draw near, but truly help in every circumstance.

As Mr. Beaver admonishes Lucy in their approach to Aslan's throne, "Safe? Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you." So we also want both a safe and an un-safe God. One bigger than everything in the universe, yet One who is a friend and a helper to us: "Oh God, You are my God!"

Thanks to David Shore's blog entry, Your God is Too Safe, from whence I copied the C.S. Lewis quote.