December 1, 2022

Psalm 72:1-4 and Isaiah 4:2

Invitation to Imagine

 

I’m inviting you to begin today’s devotional by writing down what emotions you feel when you read Psalm 72:1-4 and Isaiah 4:2. (Friend, maybe you are like me and need the feeling wheel to support you identify your emotions).

What did you feel? I’ll share my initial feelings: hopelessness. The King imagery made me feel resistance to empire and patriarchy. I didn’t feel open to hoping for a branch of the Lord that is beautiful and glorious. The hopelessness came from belief that that is not possible in today’s world.

But then an unexpected response happened within me.

Sitting in stillness with these emotions, I could feel my body offering a different response – opening up to the other side of the feeling wheel – joy, love and surprise. I started to feel an opening in my chest. I felt a different response emerging from that open space within myself: liberation and freedom and equity become possible when I can imagine them.

The invitation to imagine was a central focus of the Revelations Bible study this fall. Marcia invited us to engage in apocalypse (an unveiling, a reveal) through imagination and emotion. Advent is a season to practice using our imagination – especially through the story of a disinherited infant that upends our notions of power and supremacy.

I’m learning what emotions and feelings need to be present in me before I can enter the possibilities of imagination.

How are you invited this Advent season into a holy imagination that “the branch of the lord shall be beautiful and glorious (Isaiah 4:2)?”

Kate Shem