Holy Imagination and the Sense of Sight

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Genesis 1:1-5

Can you guess what the object in the picture is?
It's the backside of an embroidery hoop!  
Can you guess what the formed image is on the front of the embroidery hoop?   You'll have to use your imagination. 
And I suspect that there would be as many guesses as there are people and imaginations!   What you imagine isn't any less real than what someone else imagines. 
I love jumble of colors on the messy side, the jumble of unformed possibility.  The colorful chaos. 

The Creation story…
The Creation story in Judaism and Christianity (one of many creation narratives/myths floating around at that ancient time) is a tale of God creating something out of chaos and helps us to settle our minds about the creation of all things.  To put things in order.   Imagine God creating. Sewing. Pulling through threads out of the chaos and into realness.  Into something that can be seen and known.  Colorful, tangible, and wonderful. 

We humans have been called into being, into existence out of the chaos.   We are God's masterpiece, accomplishment. workmanship (Ephesians 2:10) with a purpose of being the colorful, tangible, wonderful image bearers of God.  The English words used in this letter to early Christians in Ephesus...masterpiece, accomplishment, workmanship...are translations of the original Greek word poiema.  Our English word poem comes from this same Greek word.  In all our diversity, we are collectively a living poem of God through which God is seen. 

We know that God is before all things, and in God, all things are held together.  But God doesn’t only show Themself in what we can see all around us and through us.  Yes, God can be known in what is visible and even tangible, but God also dwells within the invisible.  When we pay attention to the ah-has, the bright ideas, and epiphanies. When we are aware of our deepest thoughts, yearnings, and daydreams...this is where God dwells... in the sacred space of our imagination.

May the wisdom of our grown-up hearts sing well with our childlike curiosity so that we may not be so quick to dismiss what we cannot see with our eyes.  May we be willing to seek and see God in the tangibles and the intangibles.  As we wake up to our own sacred imagination, may it be shaped around the image of God.

A poem:  Divine Maker of Beautiful Things.

Divine Maker of beautiful things,
You are the sewer of beautiful landscapes, horizons, and vast expanses. 
Like the backside of an embroidery hoop, 
Untangle the jumble of threads that make up my heart and mind.
So that the vision we share together for the world,
can be pulled through into focus. 
Just like your finest handiwork in the world, 
May we sew together and manifest the vibrancy and beauty
of  Your colorful ways;
Stretching, sweeping, reaching the infinite edges of your Kin-dom.
Divine Maker of beautiful things, 
May it be sewn.  -Staci

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