March 4

Day 265: Faith Instead of Logic

This may come off like a ramble, but go with me...

I'm reading these days in 1 Samuel about David finding creative ways to evade king Saul. He was creative, because he was desperate.

David was forced into a life on the run that required he constantly imagine his next steps, and stay ahead of of the present.

His circumstances changed daily as threats increased. There is something appealing about that to me. Although, his circumstances themselves aren't what appeals. It's his almost constant innovating, out of necessity.

Meanwhile, I see in myself an emerging, older adult tendency. Maintenance over creativity. Managing the present over envisioning the future. While I have usually not lacked for vision, I now have to work harder to see and clarify vision for myself.

Mark Batterson writes in his book The Circle Maker, "Neuroimaging has shown that as we age, the center of cognitive gravity tends to shift from the imaginative right brain to the logical left brain...At some point, most of us stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory. Instead of creating the future, we start repeating the past. Instead of living by faith, we live by logic."

Decades ago, I served on the pastoral staff of a church already decades old when I showed up. I would swear almost everyone in that church were living by logic.

It seemed to me at the time that the highest ethic, the highest value was continuity, predictability, keeping things as they'd always been, and not rocking the boat. Innovation and suggested changes were feared or disregarded or condemned.

For a young pastor drowning in naivety, this church culture killed me. At the time I didn't think about any of them being left-brained logical. I just saw them as fearful of change and stuck in their ways.

I've always liked change, even for change's sake. I get bored easily. And I find motivation runs parallel to needed change or impending transition or new opportunities.

This past year, however, has caused me to have times when I struggle to think forward. My daily routines are on constant repeat. I fear I now have an increasing tendency to stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory.

Psalm 126:1 makes a faith statement in the past tense, even though God's salvation was still in the future. “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.”

Here's what I'm picking up today; an evidence of salvation, of restoration is a new capacity to dream. To dream of what the Lord is doing, wants to do, and how I could be involved in His Kingdom expansion.

Acts 2:17 says, "And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams."

Maybe God's greatest act described in that verse will be the old men (again) dreaming dreams. Old men restored to what they were originally created to be and do.

I need to be restored to dreaming again. I need the Holy Spirit to grant me a fresh capacity to envision what God wants to do, and how I can play a part.

I want to be renewed to live by faith, instead of by logic.