The Power of Faith and Imagination - Hebrews 11:1 & Ephesians 3:20

“The Power of Faith and Imagination 

Hebrews 11:1 & Ephesians 3:20”

 “Faith empowers the soul to travel beyond where the natural eyes can see.”  That thought caught my eye the other day as I drove by a church sign.  I am glad to have memorized it given the rubber necking intensity of rush hour.  Yet, this particular saying on a church sign, of which there are many sophomoric versions, simply and practically defines faith for daily living. 

As I meditate upon this saying, I vividly recall leaving the home in which I grew up to embark upon my life’s journey on a blistery Sunday morning in January 1980.  Dressed in my best double knit polyester suit, a firmly starched cotton blend shirt, a matching poly blend tie and wearing a pair of black shoes which were probably less than thirty percent leather, I enthusiastically and firmly faced the dawn of that day.  I felt little anxiety.  I asked very few “big” questions about whether things were going to work out as I moved ten states away to take advantage of an amazing and gracious scholarship offer.  In the dead of winter, I did not have sufficient winter clothes for New England winters.  In fact, teachers in my public school system and others community leaders raised money to help me buy winter clothes, a plane ticket, and other essential items.  Buttoning a hand-me-down shepherd’s coat, I adorned my heat with a leftover straw hat that I had won during the previous summer at a regional amusement park and picked up a worn baby blue suitcase and walked across the threshold of the front door and onto the path of my destiny. 

My description of my attire and belongings undoubtedly leads some of you to question whether it was a good that I be allowed to attend an affluent, historic, private boarding school.  Ordinarily, someone from my impoverished background would not be able, for myriad reasons, to enroll at such an elite institution.  A usual analysis would have yielded a benevolent determination that it would have been best for me to remain in my environment and make the best of the hand that I had been dealt circumstantially.  However, the indescribable generosity of the good people of my family, church and town contributed greatly to enabling this irony to become a reality.  Moreover, I contend that my faith in Almighty God and in myself made the fundamental difference.

As you read the foregoing description, you doubtless see the limitations of my resources and the immediately evident potential problems.  Would I fail out of the school?  Would I have enough money to stay until I graduated?  How would I adjust to a different culture of students?  Would the harsh and merciless winters of Massachusetts run me back to the limited and comparably mild seasons in South Carolina?  Essentially, would I be able to make the relational, educational, social, financial, and geographical transitions to succeed?  Interestingly, I did not ask any of these questions or their variations on that Sunday morning twenty-eight years, six months and a week ago.  My faith would not allow me to do so.

Through the eyes of faith, I only saw the limitless possibilities and outstanding opportunities of the incredible blessing that I have been given.  Using the eyes of the soul, I saw a golden door opening for me.  I unwaveringly believed that going would mean a chance of a lifetime.  As I write today, I do not romanticize this experience because I did succeed by the grace, love, mercy and faithfulness of Almighty God.  I assure you that it was not a given that I would.  Actually, my late paternal grandfather who reared my siblings and me did not warm initially to the idea of a fourteen-year-old leaving home to explore vast horizons on his own.  Plus, members of my family, who were shook psychologically out of their existential complacency, weighed in negatively about whether I should be permitted to go.  Additionally, I soon discovered after arriving at Cushing Academy that the adjustments were harder than I had imagined.  Twenty-eight and half years later, I can share with you that I cried incessantly during that first quarter.  What had I gotten myself into?  Would I be allowed to return and readjust to life in Sumter, SC as if I had not left for greener pastures?  Probably, you reached the same conclusion that I did about how I would be received had I returned without a Cushing diploma.  Nonetheless, I straightforwardly focused upon the potential of a lifetime and saw its promises.

The Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1).  In our mind’s eyes, faith becomes the non-corporeal evidence of the promises, goals, and dreams until they manifest naturally.  Faith empowers us to look down the corridors of time and seen the emergence and fulfillment of our hopes and aspirations.  The spiritual disciplines of meditation and imaging enable us to seize success as wait its development.  As you expect a promotion, you may begin to envision a new business card and W-2 form showing the positive and upward change in your salary.  Grab an image of your dream house; move in mentally.  See yourself driving your luxury car.  Envision waking up totally free from fear.  Look in the mirror and see yourself having lost the necessary weight to maintain good physical, mental and emotional health.  Imagine yourself arriving in the airport of another country where you have flown for a missions trip.  All of the foregoing scenarios are possible.  In Ephesians 3:20, the apostle Paul declares that God is able to do “exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us.”  These two verses reassure us of the incredible power of faith and imagination.