The Imagination Season

The 2024 Thanksgiving Day is past! I love the Thanksgiving season. All the fall colors and cooler temperatures are a physical treat to my senses. Somewhere in those sensations is the awakening of an anticipation of “something more,” something even more glorious than being thankful—something joyous!

The picture that comes to mind is being in the Olympic stadium, and the runners are standing around the starting blocks, shaking their arms and legs to stay loose. Then they get in their assigned lane starting blocks, tense and ready to snap into action. At the report of the starter’s gun, instantly, they spring from being statues into well-engineered machines.

The starting gun is Thanksgiving Day’s final dish or utensil being returned to its proper storage space. The sudden change can give a person an emotional whiplash! The mind and body launch into frantic activity, and emotions sometimes still wander around the starting blocks, wondering what happened.

Thanksgiving celebrates the real generosity of God’s care for humanity, and Christmas celebrates God’s love for humanity. Thanksgiving is mindful of the tangible things God has done, while Christmas is consumed by the anticipation of what God is doing in the world.

The proper celebration of Christmas transcends time. There are equal portions of wondering about what God did in becoming Emanuel in a past event, our Savor in the present, and our Redeemer in a future event. All this can be overwhelming—just as it should be. That overwhelming is a driving force in our desire to worship our Creator.

That overwhelming also fuels our imagination.

Our imaginations associated with Christmas could be problematic. Here is why they are not all centered in Christ. A Christmas without Christ is an exercise in chaos.

This blog pondering was sparked by the paragraph below, which I read while researching the meaning of “glory” on the Abram Publications website (www.abarim-publications.com).

There’s nothing unreal about imagination. Imagination is to human reality what complex numbers are to geometry and what path integral formulation is to quantum mechanics. Imagination is the very principle by which the entire universe is called into being. Or in other words: our reality exists in God’s imagination, and God’s reality exists in ours (John 17:1). God is love (1 John 4:8) and since he made us in his own image (Genesis 1:26), we love because he loves us first (1 John 4:19). In that same way, our amazing ability to imagine stems from God imagining us first.

Let’s go back to the Olympian runners standing around the starting block. I’m not an Olympian athlete—shucks, I’m not even an athlete. However, I can look like a natural athlete until the starter pulls the trigger on the starting gun. I can put on my tank top and short shorts. I can put a pensive expression on my face, pace about shaking my arms and legs, and even assume the starting pose for the camera. But when a response is demanded, I’m dazed and inept about what is expected.

We can use our children’s imaginations to teach them about Christmas through the image of Santa Claus, his mysterious otherness, and his magnificent generosity. But unless that teaching guides our offspring to discover and trust Christ, we teach them the virtues of capitalism. The world already has an overabundance of capitalists. Like an athlete’s body, the imagination we are gifted with must be trained to reach its most positive potential.

The purpose of celebrating Christmas is to draw attention to the truth so that our children, ourselves, and our neighbors will remember that we were first created in God’s imagination. Then, He created us as a living and breathing reality; thus, we became His “image.” That’s why we celebrate Christmas; Christ is the best of us, and we can become our best only in Him.

“So, God did just that. He created humanity in His image, created them, male and female.  Then God blessed them and gave them this directive: “Be fruitful and multiply. Populate the earth. I make you trustees of My estate, so care for My creation and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that roams across the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28 The Voice Translation)

Photo – Our little “Wise Man” long before becoming wise.