Imagining the New Creation into Being

Years ago, as a friend told me about a conference on finding one’s life purpose that she’d gone to, I had a startling realization: My conscious life-goal was not to be like my grandmother. I was appalled to realize my motivating force was a negative—not to be something.

I hear people from all over the political spectrum making predictions of coming doom and gloom. I hear talk of dismantling, defunding, repealing and undoing. Like my young self not wanting to be like my grandmother, I hear what we fear and what we don’t want, but I hear few voices actually calling into being what we do want. Words are powerful! Let’s pay attention to how we use them!

We must imagine the biggest positive futures we can for all of us. Jesus assures us the Kingdom, or Kin-dom, of God is already here among us if we will but wake up and see and receive it. While this entity he saw and imagined was a counter to Caesar’s empire everyone accepted as reality, he gave no structural details, but was clear about basic principles. Non-violence, love for all, care for the poor, healing the infirm are but a few of the qualities. This Kin-dom or Kingdom he imagined would grow organically as yeast hidden in flour leavens a loaf, not by slick ad campaigns or by legislation.

What would happen if we believed Jesus? What would happen if we believed this New Creation he imagines is here now and that by simply seeing it and naming it and imagining with him, we can make it an even greater reality here on earth? What would happen if we chose to live in the spaces where love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, generosity, gentleness, faith and self-control are planting seeds of this New Creation? What would happen if we celebrated beauty and humility over control and dominance?

I’m imagining a world where we all have everything we need to live and be safe and thrive. When we walk in faith, we act as if we have what we need already. I’m imagining a world where every child is loved, seen and heard for whom they are and encouraged, empowered, and allowed to grow into their full giftedness and calling. We can choose to see every person we meet as a gifted child of God, already beloved and valuable.

I’ve named a tiny beginning. The more I choose to imagine, the more I am able to imagine. This isn’t the moment to ask how questions, but to dare to see a vastly different world than the one we fear. It’s time to live in the reality of that world here already as we await the coming of what is not yet in full bloom among us.

I know that imagining alone will not bring anything into being. But resignation to and despair about the negative realities fear keeps projecting at us rob us minute by minute of the capacity to choose anything else. In focusing on the best positive futures we can imagine, we energize ourselves to make active choices toward them. Even the smallest choices can shift the balance toward New Life.

Every time you or someone else speaks doom and gloom, turn it around and name and see in as much detail as possible, the living, loving opposite. The New Creation is here among us. Every time we focus on the kindness, beauty, love, and generosity we see, we bring it into greater clarity in our own and other’s perceptions and increase our capacity to act in kind. Together, let us see and speak the New Creation into greater and greater fullness here and now among us.