Opening to God by David G. Benner

Author:David G. Benner [Benner, David G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

Praying with Imagination

But pondering involves even more than reflection on our experience and the thoughts, questions and emotions this raises. Just as the senses have an important role to play in attending prayer, so too the imagination has an important role in pondering prayer. Like the senses, the imagination has also often been mistrusted and marginalized in terms of its contribution to spiritual life. However, like the senses, the imagination can only be ignored at the expense of a rich prayer life.

Recently, after stating something like this in a talk I was giving, a woman approached me saying that she had always been taught that the imagination was unimportant, even potentially dangerous, because it was not true. I asked her if she ever read novels. She said she didn’t. All she ever read, she told me, was nonfiction because this, she felt, kept her grounded in reality. She may have been well grounded, but all appearances suggested that she was far from experiencing any soaring of spirit. Fear kept her from trusting that her imagination could give her perspectives on reality that facts and reason could never provide. It also kept her spiritually impoverished. Reason has the same potential for misuse as the imagination and does not deserve, therefore, to be privileged in the way it often is. Both can be used for good and for ill, and while many of us gravitate toward one or the other, we lose something of our full humanity when we overemphasize one to the exclusion of the other.[3]

There are many ways of bringing your imagination into Christian prayer. One of the simplest is allowing it to be part of your engagement with Scripture.[4] If a passage that you are reading contains a scene or description of some action or encounter (as, for example, is common if it is drawn from the Gospels), enter this scene in your imagination. Imagine the time of day, season of the year, the sounds and smells that might be present—all the elements that would make this scene real to you. Be there in the scene with the participants. Notice your vantage point—how central or peripheral you place yourself. Consider changing your vantage point. Dare to engage the participants in an imaginary conversation. Transport yourself into the setting and open all your senses to God’s presence and revelation. Allow this to become part of what you now ponder in your heart and mind. Consider the significance of what you have received, noting again what has emerged in your senses and imagination, mind and heart as you have opened yourself to God.

Take a moment to try this. Consider the following Gospel story of a moment in the life of Jesus:

On their return the apostles gave him an account of all they had done. Then he took them with him and withdrew towards a town called Bethsaida where they could be by themselves. But the crowds got to know and they went after him. He made them welcome and talked to them about the kingdom of God; and he cured those who were in need of healing.

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