The Imaginer

“I’ll take a spaceship and some mini powdered doughnuts to go,” I overhear one boy say to the other inside the cardboard box store. I smile and snap a quick photo of them actually playing nicely together; the older two assisting the younger with product selections and play money creation.

While I enjoy my boys’ simple approach to play, I know, as an adult life isn’t that easy. If only real life were as good as a child imagines it to be.  If only we could pull through a drive-thru to purchase a spaceship. If only we could create as many dollar bills in our living rooms that it required to purchase our heart’s desire. There is the rub.

But what if the world was intended to be that way? What if it was supposed to be as magical as a day Disney promises (without the painful price for admission), as limitless as a child’s imagination, and as abundant in supply of any need we could dream up?

It was... in the Beginning.

At the start of the world the ultimate Imaginer dreamed up everything from the tiniest molecule to the largest ocean, and everything in between. He decided to make light, time, plants, birds, animals, ice cream and even chocolate cake! (Genesis 1) He made space and humans to explore it all. There was no end to he possibilities and it was all perfectly perfect until…

Until that fateful day when His two most favorite creations of all decided they didn’t quite trust Him. They didn’t quite believe that He wasn’t holding out. They took something they were never designed to handle, the knowledge of good and evil, and they got way more than they ever desired in return.

Everything they were put on earth to do – enjoy a relationship with the Imaginer, take care of creation, grow food, have babies – it all got very, very hard. With that one choice to turn their back on the Creator they opened the door to everything hard; sickness, death, toil and struggle, just to survive.

I think kids imagine so much because they are still more like their Creator, uninhibited by life’s realities. They know their Imaginer’s heart. They reflect Him as they dream up drive-thru spaceship stores. They long for the day at Disney where everything is as magical as they know inside it was supposed to be every day.

Jesus tells us, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Life with Jesus isn’t perfect. It isn’t a day at Disney over and over again. That isn’t what He is promising here. But He does promise if we seek Him first, all our basic needs will be met. (Matt. 6:33). And He graciously gives so much more than our basic needs; life with Jesus is often overflowing with good things. But it is never quite perfect on this side of heaven…

That perfectly perfect comes later now – since we messed up this life – we have to live with sin and it’s consequences for now. But Someone did pay a very big price for admission into the abundant life that is to come. (1 Peter 3:18)

The question remains, will we accept the ticket to get in? At the end of our days on this earth will we enter into what a child’s heart instinctively imagines, a life more magical, more powerful, more abundant than we can even dream up?

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6.  This isn’t an invitation to perfect life in this world, but to an eternity of perfectly perfect in the next.  And I can’t wait to find out if there will be drive through spaceship stores.