Can You Imagine It?
So, as I said in the June issue, Professor Barclay, brilliant communicator, godly commentator, couldn't believe in miracles. I've been there; I know why. It's not a problem of faith, but of the imagination. He was imagining Creation scientifically, as a cosmic machine. If you're doing physics, that's where you have to start - measurable forces, invariable cause and effect. Interfere with a machine while it's still working, you bust it. But suppose Creation’s more like an organism, a living thing? Then if something goes wrong, you introduce something medicinal while it's still working, and it’s restored. Come to think of it, isn't that what Jesus was doing? Restoring what had gone wrong?
Trouble is, you can’t weigh or measure life, and that makes us feel uncomfortable. And it gets worse. As a living human being, I can think about myself. What is the “I” that is thinking? And what is the “I” that is asking this question about me?!! What is this extraordinary thing, this “I”, that talks about ‘my’ body, ‘my’ feelings, ‘my’ thoughts, memories, as things that ‘I’ own? People see, hear, feel, touch these things, but ‘I’ am something more, that nobody has ever seen, touched, measured. ‘I’ am what we call a ‘soul’, a ‘spirit’ - invisible, but real. And so are you, and millions of others that use bodies and brains as we do. And sometimes we even imagine being without them. We talk about life after death. But then maybe there are spirits that don't need bodies or brains; maybe there are many more of them than us, a kingdom greater than we, as the universe is greater than the earth! So that would be what Christians mean when they sing about ‘angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’! And Jesus meant by speaking of ‘twelve companies of angels’ at His disposal! For many years angels were Sunday school stuff to me; immaterial in every sense, more like fairies. Not any more: thankfully my imagination was rescued from being blinded by scientism, and the enrichment is immense. For we’re talking of the kingdom of heaven, ruled over by a Love so passionate that it still bears the scars, where life is all a spontaneously joyful generosity on a scale that makes our highest moments look pathetic, where we are party poopers at a divine rave-up…
John Peck