Reimagine
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Come just as you are, bringing whatever is on your heart today. Take a few moments and allow yourself to just be. Take a couple deep breaths, grab yourself a cup of coffee, light a candle, do something that brings you comfort. Allow yourself to be present in this moment.
Imagine the world as you wish it could be, and even if just for a moment, believe that world is possible.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
- John Lennon, Imagine
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Food for Thought
I consider myself fortunate to have had significant teachers and mentors at almost every stage of my life. At times, these mentors have been coaches on the courts or the soccer field, doctors in the delivery room, friends along the ministry journey; sometimes they have been family I’ve known my entire life, and at other times they were happenstance people I met along the way. But most often these mentors were the ones teaching me in the classroom.
From elementary school through graduate school, my life has been deeply blessed and enriched by teachers who poured their souls not only into the content we were learning, but also into the hearts, minds, and futures of the young people they were shaping.
These teachers pushed us to think bigger and to see challenges as opportunities, they encouraged us to broaden our perspectives and to listen with respect to our friends around us, they gave us space to make mistakes, and they taught us both the patience and persistence it sometimes takes to learn from those mistakes. They introduced us to the world as we knew it and they dared us to dream of the world as it should be. They reminded us to never underestimate our own potential and to believe we can be agents of change to make the world better.
One of these teachers in my life was my fifth grade Language Arts teacher. From what I remember of her, she was a bright, funny woman whose energy and creativity filled every ounce of her body. She taught us through poems and stories, games, and skits, but most often, she taught us through music. That year, she taught us John Lennon’s song, Imagine.
We spent that year imagining and reimagining our world, believing not only that the world could be different, but that we could be part of making that happen. No matter how slow the change might happen, however insignificant the ripples we put into the world might seem — we learned that each of us has the capacity to change the world as we know it by first reimagining our world as it can be. I think that’s what John Lennon hoped might happen when he released this song. I think it’s what our teacher hoped might live with us into adulthood. And I think it’s how Jesus went about changing the lives of the broken and hurting people around him.
Jesus took the first step to changing the world as he knew it by first reimagining the world as God intended it to be. A world where the first would become last and the last would become first. A world where the captive is free and where the oppressed are oppressed no more. A world where the sick, the hungry, the dying, the cast out find room at the table; a world that offers radical welcome and belonging to everyone, that creates and sustains life, that moves us into our better, truer selves.
This is exactly the charge we are given — to reimagine our world through the love and light of God. Even when we feel like the world is falling apart around us, even when we are sure our life is going to swallow us whole, even when we think there are parts of this world not even God can redeem. God’s love breaks into the world again and again — meeting the world where it is so the world might become new and renewed. Like a creative spirit over the chaos, it comes to reimagine life where there once was death, to break the world open with hope and possibility.
No matter how slow the change might happen.
However insignificant the ripples we put into the world might seem.
We are called to the kind of reimagining that looks for the God-given light shining forth from within us and the God-given light that shines forth from the people and the world around us. Step by step, ripple by ripple — we are called to begin changing the world as we know it is by first reimagining how we know it can be.
Draw, paint, or write about the world as you wish it to be. Put all judgments aside, and allow yourself to dream.
What is one small step you can take to make your dream for the world a reality? Take it!
Blessing
Loving God, help us to look past the world as we know it so we can reimagine it through the lens of a God who loves us and who wants wholeness for us.
Give worth to those who feel worthless, offer promise to those who feel defeated, provide healing to those who are broken, and offer renewal to those who are in deep need of seeing themselves anew.
A little Table Talk for your table...
Share with a friend your dream for how you wish the world could be.
If fully believing in your dream for the world feels difficult, why is that? Share your thoughts on this as well.
Come up with a few small steps you can take to make your respective dreams a reality. Perhaps you can be accountability buddies on your quests to make the world a better place!
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Ask your child about their view of the world. How do they perceive it — what is the good that they notice, and what is the bad?
Discuss ways that they can be ambassadors of good. What can they do to help make our world a better place?
Talk to them about ripples in the ocean — how the smallest, or seemingly insignificant, ripple can sometimes cause the biggest wave.
Meet Our Welcoming Voice!
Lin Story-Bunce is a North Carolina native, and lovingly calls Greensboro, NC home. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Wake Forest University and has served a wonderful and thoughtful congregation at College Park Baptist Church since 2009, pastoring to families and their faith development. Most of all, Lin loves the moments she gets to connect with her family, snowboarding with her wife and keeping up with their four kiddos and two energetic pups. Lin is a teacher, preacher, dreamer, and procrastinator who, if you ask her youth group, has a knack for trying to do way too many things in far too little time.
To hear more from Lin throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!
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