Its month 5 day 15, half way through my eleven month trip as my friend and I walk out of a Rwandan movie theater. We had just gotten done watching the new Godzilla movie and were making our way back to our host’s house when my mind starts spinning. I watched as the city lights streamed by, as the cars and motos passed one by one and I began to wish for something more. More than what my mind has to offer.
The world is filled with the formations of our imaginations. From generation to generation people strive to create something new. We are inspired to invent new technologies. We have visions with hopes to shape our future. Our creativeness drives us to be innovative, to create things we cannot yet see. When reality isn’t enough for us we fill the holes of impossibility with imaginations of what we wish could be. We make movies about super heroes, picture perfect love stories or even giant fire breathing iguanas. All in the hopes of satisfying our minds constant thirst for something new. We want to be surprised, bamboozled, to be inspired.
Traveling the world for 6 months, being on four different continents, 7 new countries with new cultures and ways of life, you’d think my mind would be satisfied. However, as I stared out the window of my taxi I found my self desiring more. From streets overflowing with hundreds of drug addicts and prostitutes in Colombia to earthquakes in Ecuador, from the jungles of Peru to the extreme heat in India and the mountains of Nepal, I have been flooded with “new experiences”. However everything seems to be blending together, even after hearing 12 different languages it all feels uncomfortably similar. I often catch myself not even feeling like I left home. I believe my mind tried to attach a feeling or sensation to the imaginations I had conceived before leaving for the race. Awestruck by the enormity of the great Himalayan mountains is what I imagined I would feel. Taken back by the sight of drug addicts clogging the streets would be a typical response. Playing soccer in 6 different countries, let alone visiting them, would be considered a dream by many. However it all felt so normal, as if it were just another day. In fact there are only two things that have stood out from the rest of my experiences thus far on the race. Number one being; feeling a joy that cannot be described. A joy that transcends imagination or pre conceived notions. It’s a joy that comes from the laughter of a child, a smile that breaks through sadness, a willingness to love and serve others or the moment you gain a new brother or sister in Christ. Second being; the deliverance of my sister in Nepal. An experience we often hear about in the Bible or from others, however we cannot truly grasp a moment like that with our limited imagination. We cannot experience the emotions that are inevitably entangled through an event like such, strictly through imagination. It would be equivalent to the impossibility of requesting a man to feel the pain of losing a child when he has none.
You see, the love that I have for my sister could never be imagined, it cannot be comprehended, it honestly isn’t explainable. To love someone so strongly who you met only days before doesn’t seem logical. The same goes for the inexplicable joy that fills my heart when I hear a child giggling, that a man was freed from addiction, or a woman discovers how much the Father loves her. It’s a moment, a feeling, that can only be explained and created by the mind of God.
Maybe I lack imagination, or maybe God wants to show me His. Maybe I have been desensitized by the imaginations of this world, or maybe God wants to show me something far greater, something that I cannot create in the confines of my own mind. As I look out the taxi window I realize that the imaginations of this world no longer satisfy me. After being fed an appetizer to God’s creativeness, I began to crave it. I’ve grown bored with my own imagination and infatuated with the mind of God. He gives us a promise to look forward to in John 14:12 when Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the father.” Even Jesus, who walked on water, healed thousands, cast out demons and turned water into wine says that we will do even greater things than He! I can’t imagine what that would look like or entail and I believe that’s the beautiful part. It’s God’s creativeness that we are living out, unfathomable things that only He can imagine. All we have to do is follow Him!
