Hopeful Imagination

Bishop Nick Baines in his ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 today, was talking about ordinariness becoming remarkable with hope. It resonated with me and with a prayer that has meant a lot to me over the past weeks: The Romero Prayer, below.

Sometimes, as we all know, there is a need to look beyond the ordinary. The appeal to God’s people throughout the biblical narrative is to look at their ordinary circumstances, quite often very bleak or very challenging, and see beyond them to imagine a different future. ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills—     from where will my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth,’ sings the Psalmist in Ps 121. The appeal to God’s people is to not see Now as the ultimate - how it will be forever, but to look with hopeful imagination to the Not Yet, a promised, joyful future,

The Christian story is one of Jesus defying what seemed to his friends like a hopeless situation of Roman oppression and brutal power. Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God and invited his disciples to imagine a hopeful future as if it was already here. He extends this invitation to all of his people. We here this hopeful imagination prayed for and spoken of by people who are living in the most difficult of circumstances, such as the Christians in parts of Pakistan, where fellow Christians have been killed for their faith by militant Muslims.  

Out of ordinary people come extraordinary things. Music, poetry, arts, prayer can take ordinary things, and, with hopeful imagination, point to a different future. Small things done with a hopeful imagination, prayer and faith in our extraordinary God, create an environment for change and growth. Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom of God are all infused with hopeful imagination: what we plant now is a only a tiny promise of what will grow and bear fruit later. Tiny mustard seeds - a prayer with someone who needs comfort, a word of encouragement or an act of kindness - these tiny seeds grow into large bushes providing food and shelter (and even flavour) for ordinary creatures.

On Monday In our time of Morning prayer, Bimbola prayed for the week ahead -  ‘a week that nobody has ever lived before’ to be a week where our lives and actions reflect our hope in Jesus Christ who has ushered in a new Kingdom and a new, more hopeful way of living.

Oscar Romero was an ordinary man and priest, who lived life with extraordinary hope and a determination that what he did and said would challenge and change the unjust structures of the San Salvador society. His outspokenness cost him his life. The Romero prayer was written after his martyrdom by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw. It is one which captures the hopeful imagination that, despite evidence to the contrary, God’s Kingdom will be established. Never lose hope in what ordinary people can achieve in ordinary circumstances with faith in an extraordinary God.

The Romero Prayer

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision. 

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said. 

No prayer fully expresses our faith. 

No confession brings perfection. 

No pastoral visit brings wholeness. 

No program accomplishes the church’s mission. 

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow. 

We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. 

We lay foundations that will need further development. 

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. 

This enables us to do something and to do it well. 

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. 

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.