When Shane Claiborne spent time in Iraq as a human shield early on in the second war there he visited one of the hospitals. One of the doctors choked back tears as he said to Shane, “This violence is for people who have lost their imagination.”

Imagination is key here. The church needs imagination. We need the kind of Kingdom imagination that sees weapons as potential farming tools, and military bases as potential vegetable patches. The kind of imagination that sees wasted food in dumpsters as potential feasts for the hungry, or warring nations as potential friends. The kind of Kingdom imagination which embodies concrete, practical examples of these kinds of things now, so that we no longer have to just use our imaginations. The kind of imagination that moves from talking about stories of Jesus to embodying stories of living them ourselves. To be signs of a world transformed, of God’s dream for creation, here and now.

It breaks my heart when the church can no longer imagine what it was called to be, let alone live it out now. When did Jesus’ teachings become impractical, idealistic, unrealistic?

The question is: what is our message? And if we can’t bring our message without contradicting it with our lives, should we bring it at all?

grace and peace,

Simon