Lenten Devotional Day Four
My favorite presentation of the Gospel as a little girl was The Wordless Book. Today I learned that it was “invented” by Charles Spurgeon, which makes sense. I guess I have loved both C.S. Lewis and Charles Spurgeon since childhood. Do you know about The Wordless Book? It is just a few blank pages — solid green, then solid black, solid red, solid white and solid yellow. Green represent God’s creation; black represents sin entering the world, darkening our hearts and leading to death. The red page represents Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, the white is believers being robed in Christ’s righteousness, and yellow is eternal life in heaven. I remember especially loving the white page and the idea that I could be returned to a pure and sinless state.
I think what made the whole presentation so powerful for me as a child was how it encouraged you to engage with your own imagination about what exactly those blank pages represented. It didn’t end with a picture of heaven, but the idea that it was filled with light and God’s glory. Sometimes I think our imaginations are under-utilized. Oswald Chambers said: “One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God.”
How have you put yourself deliberately before God? Do you ever imagine Him physically beside you? One time about six years ago I tagged along on my husband’s work trip to Southern California. There was a little patio where I relaxed and read on a lounge chair that looked out at the Pacific a mile or two away. As I sat there I imagined turning to Jesus, my constant Companion, in the chair beside me, and asking, “Heaven is better than this?!?”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” Ephesians 3:20
Digging Deeper:
C.S. Lewis said: “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Do you think there is an area of your life where you are trading the beach for a mud pie? Can you ask God to enlighten you and to sanctify your imagination?
Do you agree with Chambers? Do you think your prayer life is ever stultified by a lack of imagination?