The book of common imagination

There is a very old line in the Book of Common Prayer that I find striking. The line reads “Almighty and eternal God, draw our hearts to you, guide our minds, fill our imaginations.” In our public conversation, we may feel we need to grapple with the existence of God before moving on to any discussion about his character. But what God do we mean? It makes sense to ponder this assumption: That God is able to fill imaginations.

Think of how we see imagination today. It is possibility, adventure, exploration, malleability. It is a Lego spaceship repaired after battle on the kitchen floor, moon dust settled and moon rock brought back; it is centuries of navigational experience in search of a good catch turned a quarter-of-an-inch to lands unseen. Our endeavors are attempts to bring imagination into reality. If we follow the logic of imagination, it is interwoven with a hope that allows us to “construct a world unspeakably more complete and beautiful than the material world.”¹

Think of how we see Christianity today (for me, the one I learned, then denied and dismissed, and searched for other views, then observed from afar filled with suspicion, then drew near of, slowly, very curious). Its God is restriction, constraint, imposition, exclusion; all things imagination isn’t. The line in the prayer is foreign to us because the God who can fill imaginations isn’t this one, growing moldy, decaying and fading. Who would want the rotting God of restrictions in the public square?

Let us turn a quarter-of-an-inch to the assumption in this prayer about his character. We cannot give that over which we have no power. For anyone to imbue us with fascination, they have to be fascinated to begin with. For him to fill our imaginations, he must be imaginative as well. He has to relish in possibility, adventure, exploration, malleability that shapes moon rock, “the Mind that created all worlds,”¹ fascinated, immersed, drenched in reality that is drenched in him—to the point of flesh.²