Since delivering my daughter, I have been taking regular walks as often as I can. These walks started out as an attempt to get my body back to what it was pre-pregnancy (thanks to my diastasis recti running isn't a great option--see my post on 3/18/18), but very quickly they came to be so much more than that. When I go for these walks I use earbuds to listen to worship music or music that leads me to worship (which may or may not be "Christian" music) and God has used it to draw my heart to His so beautifully. I'm so thankful for the way he has been speaking to me and showering me with joy on these morning walks. I'm so thankful for the weakness of my physical body which prompted me to take up this invigorating habit!
On my morning walk today I was reminded of the incredible gift that our imagination is as we learn to worship and walk in obedience. I wrote a blog post about this a couple years ago here after reading about it in Chris McAlister’s book “Sight-Shift.”
I was listening to one of my all time favorite pieces of music, “Peponi” by the Piano Guys (an adaptation of Cold Play’s, “Paradise”). As I looked at the beautiful blue sky with its random streaks of aircraft exhaust I thought about how if I had but eyes to see, I would behold the angels soaring across the sky so much more majestically than the birds and airplanes before me. If I had but ears to hear rather than hearing the beautiful notes of music playing in my earbuds I would be enthralled by the instruments of heaven lifting up the name of Jesus… If I had but the mind to know it, I would perceive countless saints across the globe offering sacrifices of praise, and petitioning the Father that His kingdom come. These things are realities just as surely as the things that I do see and hear and know. I just haven’t yet received the physical ability to recognize them. I am convinced that the best earthly words we can come up with—majesty, ecstasy, gorgeous, stunning—are vastly inadequate to describe the sights, sounds, tastes, and feelings of heaven which exist now, just beyond our scope of perception.
That’s why our imagination is such an incredible gift! In my minds eye, I CAN see the things I know to be true and experience them in a small, imperfect, yet awe inspiring way. I need only choose to raise my eyes to the heavens and imagine, allowing my heart to be raised to the joyous praise of the King! What joy!
- Laura Dougherty
