And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. Genesis 1:3
Caleb squinted his eyes tight and groaned. “Ugh! I can’t imagine anything right now!” He complained. He sat cross-legged on the tan carpet, dressed in black shorts covered in the stuff seven-year-olds normally get into over the course of a day (dirt, food stains, sticky stuff from somewhere). His eyes opened in a scowl of frustration and connected with mine. They seemed to plead with me, “Can I please be done now?”
I had, a minute ago, asked him to sit down and imagine something, and then tell me what he saw. He seemed taken aback by this strange request and, to my surprise, appeared unable to do it. Strangely enough, the same task had proven difficult for my younger son Noah just a few minutes before.
I sat back in my chair somewhat confused, thinking. Aren’t children supposed to be good at imagination? I studied them for a while. In the silence, they had taken to talking about a video game character named Sonic (now a major motion picture!).
In the course of a minute, I watched in amazement as they proceeded to act out a make-believe scene between Sonic and one of his friends. They included super-powers, dialogue, and action in the scene. Not only that, but the emotions of the characters were clearly visible on their faces.
Imagination, in other words.
“Wait a second!” I stopped them. “You guys are doing it right now! You’re imagining!” They didn’t really get it.
I had discovered something. It isn’t that my children are bad at imagining. They, in fact, do it so naturally that it is basically their default state of existence. They are constantly imagining.
So, what was the problem when I asked them to imagine something and then tell me what it was?
Personally, I think one reason is that I was effectively asking fish to swim; birds to fly. When I asked them to imagine something and then tell me what it was, I had probably interrupted them doing that very activity naturally, on their own.
They apparently weren’t able to do the task because I had interrupted their default activity of imagination to ask them to do something: imagine. In other words, I had told them “Stop your imagination so that you can imagine something.”
ERROR: Logical contradiction detected.
That being said, I think something else is going on at the same time. I noticed that when they played, they acted out their imagination bodily, running around, gesturing wildly and shouting, with sound effects. That isn’t exactly what I wanted. I wanted them to simply tell me what they saw in their mind.
I think they had trouble doing that, not because the imagination muscle was weak, but because they imagine without words. They simply become what they imagine. They wear their creativity like a costume, putting it on and playing the role. They have not yet fully learned the skill of capturing imagination with words. Otherwise known as the skill of writing.
Writing allows us to capture a living, breathing imagination with words, save it on a page or a screen, and share it with someone – with everyone potentially. Words are the tools we use to touch the minds of those around us. We can create something in our minds, and then use our words to create that same thing in the minds of those who listen to us or read what we write.
In opening scene of the Bible, we read that God created the physical universe with words. He said, “Let there be light.” And suddenly, light appeared out of nowhere. But what did ‘light’ mean? The word ‘light’ is a name for the thing God was thinking about when He spoke the word. The word ‘light’ captured God’s imagination.
In fact, all of the words in the sentence did. “Let there be.” What does ‘be’ mean? What does ‘let’ mean? What does ‘there’ mean? Is God talking to someone? Is He instructing whoever it is to allow light to exist? Was there a prior discussion between God the speaker and another party about what the word ‘light’ meant in all its intricate details? Then, when the final decree came down to “Let the light be,” the one being spoken to knew exactly what was being said and carried it out. I wonder.
And what does it mean in Colossians 1:16 when it says of Jesus, “For by him [Jesus Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”?
If God’s words were the things through which He created, then how is it that Jesus is the one through whom God created all things?
The answer, it seems, is given by the Apostle John who speaks of the Messiah and calls Him ‘The Word.’ “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
Honestly, all of this is getting to be a bit beyond what I have fully thought through or could ever hope to fully comprehend (let alone adequately cover in this post). But the point is that our twin abilities to imagine and speak are intricately linked and are tied to the very nature of God and how He created the world.
Imagination is a kind of pre-creation. It is creation of a thing before it is. It is a creation that exists only in our minds. To prove it, try to imagine something that does not yet have words to describe it. It’s easy to do. I am doing it right now. I can’t tell you what it is because… well because then it would have words. This is for example what every novelist does before the novel is written.
Words are the vessels of creation. They bring what we have imagined into a new domain – the physical domain. When God speaks, reality changes as His imagination overwrites what exists. When we speak, mere children imitating our Heavenly Father, we can transmit our mind creations physically into the minds of others. And we can even change the fabric of our reality too, albeit on a smaller scale and over a longer timeframe, and with far more sweat, blood, and tears.
Don’t underestimate the power of your mind and the words you use. As someone far wiser than I said thousands of years ago, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” – King Solomon, Proverbs 18:21