The God Who Imagines

or how empathy might save us all

Nov 04, 2023

Hello from the Back of the Flock, where we are slowed down by endlessly runny noses, math homework meltdowns, and kids who wake up at the crack of dawn because Daylight Saving Time is the literal worst.

I’ve long said that if I ran for president, my two major platform items would be to end Daylight Saving once and for all and to provide free therapy for anyone who needs it, no questions asked. Can I count on your vote?

This month has been heavy and hard with everything from hoping those Halloween costumes would arrive in time to trying to process the news coming out of the Middle East. In today’s essay, I write about God’s rescuing love as seen in the face of my mother and medical personnel, not as some kind of Bible Band-aid to cover up the horrors, but as a hopeful attempt to articulate truths I’m clinging to with white knuckles these days.

As a kid, I had what my parents liked to call an “overactive imagination.” Perhaps, it was due to the way that I wigged out my entire family for a year by insisting we save a space at the dinner table for my imaginary twin friends, Jenny and Tilly. Or perhaps they were noticing how my imagination was fueled by the boxes of library books I raced through each week, compelling me to picture myself Laura Ingalls Wilder or Anne of Green Gables, always conjuring up fictional yet perilous scenarios that I would inevitably escape from. Regardless, looking back, my parents were probably right about me.

By way of example, one summer day, I decided to put my imagination to practice. With a five-gallon bucket in hand, I walked down to the pond near our house to catch one of the myriad bullfrogs that I pictured living there, a real pioneer girl activity. Our house was the only one on our dead-end street in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t long before I found myself in an untamed wilderness worthy of Laura Ingalls herself, who served as my inspiration for this mission, despite my very unimaginary fear of actually touching slimy bullfrog skin.

I began to quietly stalk around the pond, trying to muffle my footsteps in my white slip-on shoes from Walmart, shuffling through the marsh grasses so as not to startle my prey. I was about halfway around the pond when it happened.

Quicksand.

Or at least that was how my youthful brain categorized the sticky pond muck I had stepped into. Before I could even register what was happening, I immediately sank in over my ankles, my shoes no longer even visible, and I started to panic as the mud seized my legs. I set down my bucket and tried valiantly to free myself, but no amount of shifting my weight or pulling on the nearby cattails helped. Instead, my feet settled even more deeply into the mud.

I was stuck.

I yelled for help for a while, but even as I did, I knew it was useless. I was not visible from my house. In the wisdom of the early 1990s, I hadn’t even thought about telling my mom where I was going. I began to think through my options — people didn’t just drive down dead-end streets, and even if my dad returned from work hours early, there was no guarantee that he would see me through the brush and tall grasses.

I tried to think…what would Laura do? What would Anne do? But soon, I ended up crying, wondering, “What am I going to do?” As the sun slowly moved across the sky above me, I was just beginning to panic about it getting dark when I heard the sound of a car coming from my house. I was barely within sight of the road, but when I saw our red van coming down the hill, I began to wave my arms and yell like crazy.

I can still remember how I felt when I saw the van screech to a stop. My mom hopped out and after a short, hollered exchange, she had an accurate grasp of the situation. She climbed down into the ditch, wrestling through the heavy underbrush and thorny black raspberry bushes, and finally reached me. As she stood on the firm ground, she reached out and pulled my arms; slowly, the suction around my feet released, and I popped out of the muck, stumbling towards her, my shoes forever left behind.

I cried with relief as she hugged me, and I tried to explain what had happened; she was somewhere between laughing and crying as we headed back to the van. She told me about the feeling she’d had that I needed help, a prickly, instinctual, Spirit-given feeling, and she described how she’d been out looking for me.

I still remember the feeling of being seen….safe…rescued.

me and my mom, 11 years later in my freshman dorm, nary a bullfrog to be seen

A few weeks ago, a video from NPR stopped my scroll.

In it, a journalist stands on the deck of a large ship. She describes how the ship had recently responded to distress signals from two nearby boats and had come across the sinking vessels, both full of refugees. The SOS signals had summoned the Doctors Without Borders ship to these struggling migrant boats in the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean.

The camera panned to scenes of organized chaos — people hugging, huddled together in blankets on the floor, receiving medical treatment by masked personnel.

But what has stayed with me most was the shot of the head of the medical team. She stood at the door of the ship, and as each rescued person stepped aboard, she pulled them in, looking each one straight in the eyes as she said the word, “Welcome.”

I don’t know her story - this woman at the door. Maybe she herself has been forced to leave home, has faced a dangerous journey, or maybe just imagining being a conduit of safety compelled her to where she stands now. On this ship, there is profound sense of relief, and you can see it in the faces of the beleaguered people on the ship — and it’s not just the warmth, the food, the medical care…it’s the reality that when they called, someone finally answered; it’s the dignity of eye contact. It’s the smile at the door. It’s the welcome.

I do not know what it is to be a refugee pulled to safety from choppy waters. I do not know what it is to be Palestinian or Israeli in this moment; I cannot for one trembling minute truly know the fear and grief that surrounds each one. But I can imagine.

And God can too.

It will always and forever be bananas to me that that God sent a perfect representation of himself to earth in the form of a baby boy who wore diapers and had to learn to talk and struggled with friendships. A boy who was once himself a refugee, a man who was hunted down and killed unjustly. That Jesus walked this earth and felt our pain and wore our weakness allows the God of the Universe to imagine human suffering with vivid accuracy - a perfected imagining. And what is empathy if not compassionate imagination?

The incarnation is God’s embodied empathy.

I was once taught that when Jesus said, “I came to seek and save the lost,” he was only referring to those of us who were sinful beyond repair. But I have come to see this seeking, this saving, that he describes as something for all of us in need. Because he knows the particular pain of being on the run, Jesus is seeking the refugee. Because he knows what it is to be under attack, he is seeking out all those who tremble in fear.

This is a rescuing love.

It is the love of the woman Jesus compares himself to, the one who turned her whole house upside down to find just one lost coin, who had a party with her neighbors once she found it.

It is the love of a Good Shepherd who leaves his flock of ninety-nine safely in the pen in order to go out into the wild and search for the one who is lost. Jesus tells us he rejoices over the rescued sheep, who I imagine shakes with relief in the Shepherd’s arms.

It is the love of a mother racing down the road in a red van, eyes frantically searching the forest on either side for her missing daughter.

These last few weeks, I have been interspersing the heaviness of the news coming out of the Middle East with two songs from the Porter’s Gate. One implores Jesus to simply come, to be our light, to drive out the darkness. The other asks, “How long, Oh Lord?” Like all of us, I do not know how to bear the sheer burden of the suffering so many are experiencing right now, especially from so far away. But I do trust that God is a rescuing God, who is near to the brokenhearted, who, like the ship, responds to those in need. And I know that I too can draw near to those who suffer by bearing witness, by not allowing myself to grow numb, by calling my representatives, and by asking God, every single day, to come to those in need.

I trust that God is a God of eye contact — “The God who Sees” according to a sexually misused, foreign slave woman Hagar (Genesis 16). This is a God who looks bleeding women and corrupt tax collectors alike right in the eye (Luke 8:40-48 & 19:1-10). And I know that we too can look into the eyes of each terrified civilian by remembering what it is to be afraid, imagining what it is to be rescued, because, after all, it might be empathy that saves us after all.

So many of us were taught about God who “stands at the door and knocks,” but in these days, I imagine a God who stands at a door flung wide open and welcomes each and every tattered one of us — the broken longing to be made whole, the terrified just wanting peace, the mourning who have forgotten what it is to rejoice.

It is admittedly not easy to hold on to these truths about a rescuing God when we are flooded with news about thousands killed and innumerable innocents suffering. But I am throwing my lot in with the God who Imagines. This God identifies as “a great, high priest who can sympathize with our weakness,” who loved us by becoming us, who knows our pain and fears and longings intimately, who longs to rescue us - from quicksand and capsizing and the chaos of war - and welcome each of us home.

(banner image by Barth Bailey on Unsplash)

I’d love to know what’s getting you through these hard and heavy days. What are you doing to fight for peace in the world and within yourself?

What I’m Loving Lately:

FOR THE CURRENT MOMENT- If you need non-partisan, factual news in your life to help you know what’s going on in the world without panicking, you need Sharon McMahon. She is my primary news source these days; plus when things get too heavy, she shares videos of humpback whales breaching and otters holding hands. Plus, I can’t help but plug World Central Kitchen. If you feel like giving, this highly vetted organization is actually on the ground in Gaza and other places around the world, serving hot meals. Give here.

READ - Several years late to the party, I flew through Circe and am currently in a Greek mythology deep dive. I loved Tell Her Story, an account of women in the New Testament and an argument for why we shouldn’t exclude women from ministry (spoiler: Paul didn’t!). And I finished Liturgy of the Ordinary, a love letter to how the mundane leads us to the sacred, every time. Swoon!

WATCH - Someone once tweeted (Xed??) about how instead of celebrity gossip, they’d prefer to know why Brett and Janet at the local Kohl’s aren’t getting along. I couldn’t find the tweet after four minutes of searching, but the real point of this is that I’ve been binging Superstore, and you won’t believe the drama between Dina and Glenn. This show is the exact brand of humor we need right now.

LISTEN - In addition to the songs from the Porter’s Gate Lament album that have been on repeat for me, I’m just really having a moment with The Gloaming Instrumental playlist on Spotify. It kind of makes me want to cry, in a good way.

EAT - I’ve been making these two meals from Budget Bytes on repeat because (a) everyone in my family actually likes them and (b) groceries are stupidly expensive right now — creamy chicken and orzo skillet and slowcooker meatball subs (pro tip: double these meatballs raw and freeze half on parchment before moving to a ziploc. You’ll have a super easy second serving of these, courtesy of your past self).