A Sanctified Imagination

As we draw near to Christmas morning, we remember that we started this journey a few weeks ago by talking about waiting. About anticipation. About how to engage the time between now and the day we know is coming, and now, that day is almost here. 

There's something interesting about the Christmas story - it's the number of small details that we know. 

Just off hand, I'm betting you can answer a few questions about the narrative. You know what town it was in. You might even know what town Joseph and Mary traveled from to get there. You know where Jesus was laid. You know about a star in the sky. You know which two groups traveled to see Him. You know what three gifts they brought. (You know there might or might not have also been a little drummer boy.) You know who was the leader over the Roman region at the time. You know who Jesus's cousin was. 

Can you name any other biblical character's cousin? 

The point is this: we have so celebrated this day, this moment, captured it on postcards and paintings, wrapped it in our own swaddling clothes that it's no stretch to say that our holy imagination is sharpest this time of year. We can, for the most part, put ourselves in the stable in the inn. See everything. Smell everything. Hear everything. Sense everything. 

We look at Christmas morning, and we have a sense that we know what it was like. It wraps us in a warmth that is strange for so many of us, and yet....

Why? 

We read the words about Christmas the same way we read any of the other words in the Bible, and there are plenty of cool, visual stories that we can pick out. But how often do you envision what it must be like to stand on the edge of a valley and face a giant warrior? To look out over a desert of dry bones? To build an ark? 

Okay, here's the thing about that one - there is a replica ark somewhere in Kentucky, I believe, and it's supposed to be built-to-scale and every time that I talk to someone who has been there, they are completely wowed by its size. They couldn't have imagined, reading the story, that it would be so big. 

But put us in a barn with a little bit of hay and a star in the night sky, and we're like, "Yeah...this is exactly how I imagined it." 

Some might say that it's because we have multiple accounts of Christmas, so we have read the story more than we have read many of the others. But there are plenty of stories that are recorded for us in multiple gospels, and we don't have the same imagination for those. Ever felt in your bones what it must have been like to be in one of the many crowds that followed Jesus? To cry out from the side of the road? To see a lame man walk? 

No? 

There's something about the Christmas story. 

But there doesn't have to be. 

What if we used the same sanctified imagination we use at Christmas to put ourselves into the rest of God's story? Into Eden. Into Canaan. Into Mount Moriah. Into Calvary. Into this holy moment right now. Yes, this one. 

The way we vision Christmas, so much more rich and vibrant and full than any other story in all the Bible, can teach us how to treat the others the same way if we'll just pay attention. 

How would that change our faith?