One of my favorite characters in literature is found in Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy; the character of Levin.He is a wonderfully imagined character who actually strives to be good. What makes him such a powerful character is that Tolstoy manages to imagine a character who is wonderfully, believably and truly good. That's really rare in literature. We can imagine bad things... its really hard to imagine new good things.
It's hard to imagine true good in our city; especially a city like Oakland that gets slandered all the time. This passage invites us to imagine a future where good is not an ideal, but a lived out reality. That incredibly pithy image of spears being bent around to become fishing hooks shows such an imagination. How do we see the streets, the stores, the cars, the buildings, the trees, the institutions around us as objects of real good.
God is imagining these good things as we speak. May we join him in that.
Prayer: Lord, may we walk in the light of your good imagination. While we wait for you, help us to build things that are really good in our homes, our streets and our workplaces.
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