Taking the Present Seriously

One of my working assumptions for Redemptive Imagination is that life matters - right here, right now.

Life is not just a “waiting room” for heaven. It’s not a “cosmic test” or “strategy game.” We are not “museum guests” objectively observing the world from a safe distance.

Rather, Jesus calls his disciples to follow him right now. When tragedies strike or injustice reigns, those who are being formed into the compassionate image of Jesus cannot conclude: “Oh well, at least we know it all works out in the end!” We are to be known by our love! Discipleship is a journey of Christlike formation - not to audition for heaven, but as conduits for the New Creation that’s breaking into the present.

A redemptive imagination is bound to earth, not stuck in the clouds! We imagine justice for the oppressed, sacrificial love, compassion for all neighbors, and hope-filled creativity… and then we embody it during the unrehearsed moments of life.

Ultimately, this reflects God’s nature. God is not pressing any escape buttons for heaven. God is trying to bring heaven to earth, not the other way around!

Scripture is clear on this point: God is far more committed to humanity than we are. We give up on each other real quick. We constantly choose profit over people. We have a tremendous capacity for indifference. But God? Slow to anger; abounding in steadfast love; faithful to the thousandth generation (Exodus 34:6-7). God loves this world and desperately wants to fill it with divine presence.

If this is true, then every part of our lives provides opportunities to practice redemptive imagination. Today must matter - regardless of how spiritual or non-spiritual I expect it to be. Even on my most ordinary day, the Holy Spirit is just waiting for me to imagine New Creation and then embody it.

Isn’t this a comforting word? Does it envision you for a purposeful life? Does it reveal why today matters? For you? For our neighbors? For those who suffer unjustly? God is not giving up on this world, and we are called to co-partner in its redemption.

To bring this point home, let’s turn to two wonderful guides, whose words witness to a redemptive, imaginative faith that takes the present seriously.

St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish mystic from the 16th Century, wrote this poem titled, Christ Has No Body:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Imagine if we lived with St. Teresa’s words in the front of our minds…

When I read this poem, I imagine “the great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us with great acts of love and justice. I imagine those who have provided for the poor, advocated for the marginalized, marched for freedom, taken courageous stands for peace, cared for the forgotten, protected the immigrant, and resisted oppression. These are the hands, feet, and eyes of Jesus.

Much stands against love in our world today. ICE agents are traumatizing entire communities, wars rage across the globe, disinformation grows by the day, and poverty traps millions of God’s children. (And that’s just scratching the surface).

“Christ has no body now but yours.” And so - with redemptive imagination - we must live like signposts to New Creation, sticking out by acts of love, justice, and compassion.

Makoto Fujimura is a modern saint who has deeply impacted me. He is a Christian artist who sees creativity as having a place in the Kingdom of God. If the present - even its materiality - actually matters, then art is not a waste! In fact, the things that we put our hands to can become reflections of God’s beauty, goodness, and truth. In his incredible book, Art and Faith, Fujimura tells this parable about New Creation and God’s loving intentionality toward us:

Imagine a father taking his child to the beach. The father watches his child make a sandcastle, which will be wasted away by the high tide. But this father happens to be an architect. Imagine that this father loves his child so much and is astonished at the design of the castle that his child has made. Several years later, the child looks in amazement as the father creates a real castle that is based on the sandcastle that the child created.

This may be close to what the New Creation will be like. God desires in God’s heart to be with the child as the child plays on this side of eternity. God chooses, out of God’s gratuitous heart, to co-create into the New World. There is no particular need for the architect father to create an actual building, but the father re-creates in love, and he has the power to do so. The New Creation is filled with such attentive, self-giving outworking of God’s love toward us.

The lesson here is that God takes far more seriously than we do what we make, even in “inconsequential play,” and everyday realities can be enduring materials through which the New Creation is to be made.

I find this passage remarkably beautiful. I was holding my newborn child when I first read it, and it brought me to tears.

• Do you know that God wants to recreate your “sandcastles?”

• Do you trust that God watches over you with delight?

• Do you feel the “attentive, self-giving outworking of God’s love" toward you?

This is true today - not just in eternity. Your life matters, this world matters, and the way we show up matters.

Let’s imagine what it looks like for disciples to be known as the most hospitable, just, loving, and compassionate people on planet earth.

Then, let’s live it out with courage, persistence, and gritty hope.