Lift up your eyes and look to the
heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name. — Isaiah 40:26
In
Isaiah’s day, God’s people had starved their imaginations by looking on the
faces of idols. Isaiah told them to look to God, to the author of everything
created and imagined. He made them lift their eyes to the heavens, so that they
might begin to use their imaginations aright.
Nature to
a child of God is sacramental. In every wind that blows, in every night and
every day, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and withering of the
earth, there is a real coming of God to us, if we will only use our starved
imaginations to realize it. If we learn to associate ideas worthy of God with
all that happens in nature—with the sunrises and the sunsets, with the moon and
the stars, with the changing seasons—our imaginations will never be at the
mercy of our impulses but will always be at his service.
Is your
imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work?
Your experiences of salvation and sanctification? If your imagination is
God-starved, you will have no power when difficulties arise. When you need
strength, don’t look to your own experience or understanding; it is God you
need. Go out of yourself—away from your idols, away from everything that has
been starving your imagination. Take Isaiah’s words to heart: lift your eyes to
the heavens and deliberately turn your mind to God.
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