Imagination

     Keeping imagination in focus is another way of saying you are keeping the faith.

 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen ."

 -Hebrews 11:1

     Children can imagine anything. They are able to see things clearly that are out of focus for adults. Childlike faith means accepting things that are not seen as though they were visible. Working with children keeps my imagination in focus daily.
    This morning, a child who speaks limited English handed me a plastic pear and said, "Upsy-daisy. It is juicy!" I pretended to eat it as though it were really juicy and slurped and made a big deal about pretending to wipe my chin. "No! Not eat- drink it!" She didn't want me to pretend it was a real juicy pear, she wanted me to pretend it was a drink. She was taking this pretending game to a new level. In her broken English (not her first language), she was trying to say, "Drink Up! It is juice!" I thought I was pretending just fine by imagining the plastic pear to be a real one. Here was a child who could easily see a plastic pear as a drink, while her teacher was so limited in her ability to imagine much beyond taking a fake object and making it real.

    The thing about childlike faith that makes it so much better than adult-like faith is that it requires no thought or effort. Children have wonderful imaginations the way the beach has waves. The adult teacher in this story actually had to give thought to the pretending game. For the child, whose imagination is alive and well, there was almost a frustration with the teacher for not "getting" it. The child teacher taught the adult teacher a good lesson today.