For the next few minutes please allow yourself a break from your present reality. There is a supernatural agenda at work that has brought us here together. For just a little while forget all that a lifetime of experience has taught you. Tune out and turn off the tyranny of what must be accomplished before the sun goes down. Take this time right now to consider remote possibilities. I’m asking you to engage your imagination and listen with your heart. Surely you remember imagination don’t you? It was our imagination that carried us as school kids through long hot summers. It was the thing that existed before Xbox, Nintendo, and Playstation. Before there was cable and satellite television, multiplex cinemas and Blockbuster we traveled enchanted realms that were only limited by our ability to imagine. As a boy my backyard was a desert island, a battlefield, an old west town or an extraterrestrial landscape. I climbed trees in the amazon jungle hiding from hostile natives. Sometimes I wore a gun belt, spurs, and a silver star. Other times I wore the armor of a medieval warrior and I carried a sword in the service of my king. It was I who slew the dragon and rescued my first and true love. In my imaginary lands of adventure there were magical forces of good and evil at work battling for supremacy. Good always ultimately prevailed. I was always strong. I was always brave. I was feared by my enemies and I was always victorious. Death could not stop me. I always survived to fight another day. My name is Caleb and I was immortal.

Do you remember your imagination? Are you there yet? Take one more step with me, okay? Assuming you are in your kingdom of make believe, what if it were possible to further imagine another realm beyond what you can imagine? I think if that were possible then that is the place to which our imagination would carry us. Since such a place is beyond our ability to comprehend or imagine, I’m thinking that’s the place where God lives. What if such a place truly existed?

When did I outgrow my imagination? I think it was about the same time I began to believe lies about myself and God. The lies are woven into the fabric of how I think. They have become incorporated into the way I live like a secret malignancy. I blindly exchanged what was real and true for something else, something hopeless. What lies? What was it that robbed me of my heart and imagination? I think the lies can be summed up into the two parents of all lies: I am not the man God says I am and that God is not who he claims to be. There was not a definitive moment in time when I stood before God, shook my fists, and called him a liar. I’m a parent and I have come to learn that what I say is far less influential than how I live. The message of my life speaks to the hearts of God, my wife, my children, and my friends. I didn’t have to tell God that he had deceived me because I was living as though it were true. My words would have been an unnecessary redundancy.

I’m hoping that you don’t perceive me as an infidel, apostate, or pagan. I was educated during the Christian school movement of the 1970’s. I attended and graduated from a Christian university. I married the daughter of a pastor. We have been married since 1985. Together we have had and adopted six children. I teach a Sunday school class at our church. I sit in a pew near the front of my church. I am a model of North American Christianity. I did the things that I believed should have made my life “abundant” and correct. I followed the rules as outlined by the tenets of my denomination. But secretly I believed that there was something vital and fundamental missing in my life. On the horizon of my consciousness there was a place that considered my belief system and my means of making life work a lie. From afar I would look at that place and claim to myself that it wasn’t true. There’s too much invested, it can’t all be a lie.

There came a time when events and circumstances pushed me closer and closer to my mind’s horizon. As I moved ever closer I recognized a man from my youth and imagination. He spoke to the core of me when he said, “It’s time to awaken. It’s time to remember the secret places of your imagination. Do you want the mystery that lies beyond your ability to conceive? Will you follow me back home?”

My daughter, Ashley, was sixteen. She’s the oldest. There were times when she absolutely hated me. She defied me. She had no appreciation for what her mom and I provided. On one occasion I passed her in traffic. When our eyes met, for my viewing pleasure she displayed a hand gesture that calls for the extension of one finger. It was during this time that I was asking questions of myself. What was I teaching her? What did my life show her? I didn’t like the answers. Was I teaching my kids how to coexist with the “culture” instead of teaching them their roles as cultural subversives? I think I was blindly leading the way to a place without imagination. Instead of standing in the gap between the “culture” and my children, was I providing a bridge to the life it offered? At the time I would have defined her as rebellious and angry. Neither of us could understand what the anger and rebellion were about. I have a theory, however. I’m not completely convinced of it so feel free to disagree. I think that instead of defining her as a rebel she may have been better described as an insurgent. I was showing her a life without imagination and she absolutely refused to surrender. She was protecting the part of her that filled her life with wonder.

The summer before Ashley’s last year of high school she became interested in going on a mission trip with AIM to Romania. Her younger sister and brother were adopted from there. I thought it would be good for her to see life as it existed outside the bubble of North American culture. The Romania I saw on my visits was dark, dirty, and desperate. Maybe she would return home with a sense of appreciation for me and the life she had because of me. The girl that went to Romania is not the same girl who returned. Something happened to her. Something seized her and she seized it. She met the Jesus who defied her imagination, not the one who fit so neatly into her dad’s box. I don’t mean to say that for a while after her trip there was a fire that blazed one or two weeks then just as quickly faded. She found out, as I was beginning to see for myself, that he is who he claims to be. My box could not contain him any longer. It occurs to me that maybe it was me who was in the box.

Ashley is twenty now. She lives in Guatemala City. She is employed there with the same organization that facilitated the adoptions of her brother and sister. She abandoned the American dream and chose what was real instead, her imagination. I was in Guatemala recently. I had to sign some papers pertaining to the adoption of one of the two kids my wife and I are adopting. Where else except in the land of make believe can a sister select who her next brother and sister are going to be? On the last day of my visit it was Sunday and she wanted to take me to church. The congregation met in a large room attached to a parking garage. Before we went in she told me that the service lasted a bit longer than what I may have been used to. I told her that if it became tiresome we could slip out. The worship part of the service was already underway and we stood together in front of our folding chairs. Any thought of leaving left me when I sensed God’s spirit moving among the people. Try to imagine a place where a dad and his young adult daughter stand together before God worshipping him together. What if it were you and your son or daughter in that imaginary place? Those few minutes in time were a defining moment in my relationship with Ashley. I began to see her as not just my daughter any longer. I began to see her as my sister. When I consider our history of storms, battles, and tears I am humbly amazed. What an adventure this life is. My imagination pales in comparison with what God has planned.

When I was a boy my imagination told me I was mighty, brave, good, and true. I was a hero and my enemies lived in fear of me. I believed magic was real and evil would be defeated. My imagination taught me that I could kill dragons. When I was older, much older, I realized that my childhood imagination was really God showing me who I was: My name is Caleb, I am immortal, and I live in the service of the King.

Caleb