Imagine That!

The Bible offers some rather odd images of God. One minute God is a rock and the next a rose; a loaf of bread and then a bear and then a branch. There are things that don’t seem to make much sense in our culture, like “Buckler,” “Horn of Salvation,” and “High Tower” (BTW, all 3 are found in Psalm 18:2). Then you have the whole chasing down sheep thing and sweeping floors and the grumpy neighbor (that one is in Luke 11). One of my favorites is mother hen. To me this plethora of descriptions is just God’s way of connecting on a personal level with whomever God is talking to at the time.

I recently experienced this when I read Blessings Flow to a six-year-old. If I was a little more limber, I might say reading to a child is like dancing a ballet. (Okay, so I would have to be a lot more limber.) I say a ballet because one minute the child is taking the lead and the next moment the reader leads the child. If you would like to see this in action and have 17 minutes and 40 seconds, click on the video below.

Sometimes I read Blessings Flow to my 9-month-old grandson. I think we never quite know what babies see or hear or understand, but what we know is not the point. The point is that by reading to a child we give them the chance to live into the imagination that God has delightfully knit within each one.

So if you ask me for what age of child Blessings Flow is best suited, I will say that depends on your imagination. Can you imagine a 4-year-old calling a friend, or an 80-year-old dancing in joy? Can you imagine a 12-year-old being an agent of justice in her neighborhood or a 57-year-old longing to have someone shake him clean? Can you imagine a 16-year-old just wanting to fly away, but instead being lifted high with the true name “Beloved”? And then, of course, we have God’s imagination who actually thought a little child could change the course of eternity and so we have the blessed news, “For unto us a child is born!”