Picturing Hope

What does hope look like for you?

For American poet Emily Dickinson it was a little bird:

‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all’

Yesterday I was chatting with my daughter about the idea of fostering ‘hopeful imagination’; the work of picturing what a future of goodness and beauty and truth might look like before we work towards its achievement in our lives.

The Old Testament proverb puts it like this: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’.

I’m more and more convinced of the power and necessity of encouraging the human imagination for good in so many aspects of my work in education, and of life in general. We need ideas and inspiration and pictures of the possible! The imagination is an amazing human faculty, and increasingly I believe that using it well deserves more of our thought and attention. More of all that later perhaps.

For now, back to my story. After my daughter and I finished chatting, I put down the phone, and a song came into my head, just as they sometimes do: apparently unannounced!

It’s a song called ‘With Imagination’ by Harry Connick Jr, released in 1991. I confess, as a 1980s and 90s child, I’ve listened (and danced!) to lots of Harry Connick’s big band numbers, but the lyrics of this one reappeared quite suddenly from somewhere hidden deep in my memory. Have a listen!

There are lots of songs about the imagination, most famously John Lennon’s 1971 blockbuster ‘Imagine’. But whereas Lennon urges us to imagine there is no Heaven, Connick seems to invite us to imagine what Heaven is like, and to live in its light:

In my father’s house
No harsh words are spoken
In my father’s house
No vows are broken
In a holy place
My soul like beams oaken
With imagination
I’ll get there

When weary is your world
Go and spin another
When weary is your world
There’s heaven to discover
Here on earth
We’re sister and brother
With imagination
Hey, we’re gonna get there

In fact Connick’s song points to Scripture, which is full of pictures of hope, and specifically to those amazing words of Jesus in John 14 when He gives us an image of Heaven as His Father’s house. It’s a lovely, intimate picture if we stop to think about it: a hospitable home; a spacious dwelling-place where we can be with Jesus. And the guest rooms have been made ready, just for us! It’s a bit like going to stay with our best friend in their family home, where the preparations in place make it plain for all to see that they are excited to have us join them.

Connick’s song, and the ‘hopeful imagination’ my daughter and I were discussing, bring to mind that line in our Lord’s Prayer that He taught His followers to pray: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.

May God give us the pictures of hope in our imagination that we need to live out His good and perfect will, this day, and all our days.