“There are only two ways to live your life. One, as though
nothing is a miracle. The other, as though everything is a miracle.” –
Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” –
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein may be the last person that I would have turned to for
inspiration in Christian spirituality. As far as I know, he has never been
referred to as Saint Albert. He is well known for his mathematical insight and
his great scientific mind, he is a genius who understood mysteries that
befuddled the most learned people of his day. Yet, this seemingly complex man,
I am learning, was at heart a simple fellow – his mind processing thoughts more
akin to a child than what you would think a scientific genius would entertain.
His mind was full of imaginations and music, daydreams and melodies: apparently
the stuff of genius. He attributes his breakthroughs and revelations to
intuition and inspiration, not disciplined mathematical process. Before I left
on my journey, my friends gave me a going away card with the Einstein quote
displayed, “There are only two ways to live your life. One, as though
nothing is a miracle. The other, as though everything is a miracle.” So,
you could say this was an opening thought for my journey.
As I have journeyed around the world for eleven months, from country to
country and culture to foreign culture, one of the main themes in my line of
thinking has been the Kingdom of God. Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God a
lot, so it ought to be a theme of importance for most Christians. Yet, it is
surprisingly neglected and not talked about much in most of the circles I have
walked in. I think I know why: it doesn’t do much for your pride to be
associated with children. When Jesus taught about the Kingdom, he usually did
so using parables, or simple children’s stories. When asked who was the
greatest person in the Kingdom, Jesus sat a little kid on his lap and said,
“Become like this child if you want to be great.” When asked about how to enter
the Kingdom of God, Jesus said unless you become like little children, you can’t
even get in! Spare me the storybook bible, Jesus, and give me some philosophy
that is more palatable to my western mindset, please.
It’s funny (and sadly typical), that as I have grown up I began to shun
things I deemed “childish.” I stopped singing songs. I stopped using my
imagination because I didn’t want anything to do with a big purple dinosaur
named Barney. God and miracles and things that I could not see, I shelved away
with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I didn’t have time to pray to a God who
didn’t listen or wasn’t there and I certainly wasn’t about to think that God
would want to speak to me. That stuff belonged in the attic with so many other
things I had outgrown.
So, maybe it is not so surprising that as I now desire to know God more and
follow Jesus more closely in my life, I am having to eat a few pieces of humble
pie. That’s right, I’m having to sort through the attic of my soul and memories
and learn how to utilize childish practices that I ditched a long time ago.
According to Jesus, if I want to understand God and the way things operate in
His Kingdom, I have to become like a little child. If I want to be a genius in
the Kingdom of God, I need to abandon what I understand to be reasonable and
reliable and depend upon things that look foolish and childish to everyone
else. Things like faith and prayer and believing in what I cannot see and
living my life expecting God to speak and show up. Oh boy.
Thanks to Einstein, my pride doesn’t feel as wounded doing this. I mean, if
he used his imagination and daydreamed to music, then maybe I shouldn’t feel so
bad. If Einstein unlocked the mysteries of the universe with a violin, then
maybe I can unlock the mysteries of the Kingdom of God with a
harmonica.
During one of our times of worship recently, I had the impression that God
wanted me to research harmonic interference theory, resonance
and standing wave patterns and all that jazz. So, I did a little internet
research and was really inspired by it, surprisingly. It seems a little nerdy,
but something about two waves of the same frequency interacting and causing
constructive interference is exciting to me! It makes me want to tune the
instrument of my soul to be in harmony with the music that my
creator is making. In the process of my research, I came across an article on
Albert Einstein, which spoke about his strange thought processes as they are
related to music. In the middle of the article, I came across the quote;
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
This quote really brought me full circle in the journey I
have been walking through and it has stated well the lesson I have been
learning. I began with Einstein and I am ending with Einstein. In order to be
a genius in the Kingdom of God, you have to imagine things as a little child
would. I am learning not to rely on my tendency to analyze everything by my
intellectual reasoning mind, but slowly to revert back to the simplicity of a
child, understanding that the deepest mysteries of life in the Kingdom of God
are discovered by imaginations that are informed by intuition and inspiration.
C’est la vie! Such is life in the Kingdom of God.
