Picture This
LETTER BY GRACE POUCH
Three hundred days on the market with no offers. My husband William and I had come to tour a property — possibly our next renovation project.
It was easy to guess why the home hadn’t sold. Most people only saw faded pink siding. An awkward layout. A hair salon added to the back. I saw a gem.
Well, not a gem in the present. But I could imagine a beautiful future version of this house.
Dreaming up possibilities was just the first step. Next, I had to help the bank and contractors see it too: the salon as a master suite, the clumsy kitchen as a foyer, the carport as a living room.
Some people help us see the potential in a structure. Some help us see the potential in the human soul, in our communities, and in all creation. Gifted storytellers and artists bring out-of-reach realities to life for us. They creatively cast a vision of God’s kingdom coming into corners of the earth — and into corners of our hearts and daily lives — where we strain to see possibilities.
We see sagging gutters and shabby wallpaper. They say, “Picture this.”
Jesus was such a storyteller. He crafted parables to penetrate hard hearts. Beneath the surface of the natural world he saw a world of meaning, ripe with beauty and truth to resurrect people’s hope. With word and deed, he sketched the kingdom life God invites us into — a life of grace and wholeness, a community of loving persons actively cooperating with God in the renovation of their hearts and minds.
And many have followed Jesus’ lead. This week’s podcast highlights one of the all-time great Christian storytellers, George MacDonald, the 19th-century Scottish preacher and fiction writer about whom C.S. Lewis wrote, “He baptized my imagination.” MacDonald’s fairy tales stir our hearts’ desire for God and help readers picture the potential splendor of a world refreshed by goodness.
It is easy to despair when the whole world seems to be marching off a cliff to the beat of the Devil’s drum. Sometimes we stand in front of hopeless-looking situations and can’t see beyond the surface. So when our imaginations hit a wall, we need great storytellers to hoist us up to catch God’s vision — a vision of the Master Renovator making a masterpiece out of a mess, even if you have to squint to see it.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
On this week’s Life with God episode, Sarah Clarkson talks with Nate about the author George MacDonald and how he inspired Sarah’s literary imagination as well as her imagination for life with God.
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2.
Renovaré readers get a sneak peek from Sarah Clarkson’s forthcoming book Reclaiming Quiet, in which Sarah asks “what is imagination?” and uses an allegory from MacDonald to unpack the answer. (Reclaiming Quiet is available for preorder here).
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3.
You can read Sarah’s favorite George MacDonald story for adults, Lilith, online here.
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4.
Eucatastrophe is J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary word for “a massive turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen victory, usually brought by grace rather than heroic effort.” He describes eucatastrophe in this excerpt from On Fairy-Stories.
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5.
With despair on the rise, interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Amanda B. Vernon says that children’s stories are a boon of hope. On the CPX Life & Faith podcast, Dr. Vernon explains how adults and children benefit from fiction that “shed[s] light on deep human needs, including our longing for justice, agency, truth, wonder and redemption through suffering.” (Conversation starts around 2:36).
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6.
Katelyn Dixon shares an original essay with Renovaré about the George MacDonald story that served as a “North Star” during a time of spiritual darkness.
– Grace
WORTH QUOTING
“The sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears…produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives — if the story has literary ‘truth’ — that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Letter 89
(source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
The Runaway Bunny
Illustration by Clement Hurd 1942. Image © The Edith and Clement Hurd 1982 Trust
(source)
When my son Henry was three years old, we were reading The Runaway Bunny, and Henry said, “I think Jesus painted this book.” Little ones can sense deep truths in imaginative stories. Sometimes grownups can, too. The Runaway Bunny is about the steady, tireless love of a parent. It also speaks to me of God’s sure and constant presence. The illustration above goes with Little Bunny’s announcement that he is going to become a bird and fly away and Mother Bunny’s answer: “If you become a bird and fly away from me, I will be a tree that you come home to.” The words stir my imagination with echoes of Psalm 139, “If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, And thy right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139:9)
TO PONDER
What is a childhood story that gave you a sudden glimpse of Truth?