Postkiwi

Tomorrow night at Logan Uniting we’re focusing on heaven. My kids were shocked when I told them I was reading up about heaven so I’d be ready for Sunday. I’m not planning to go there just yet.

So the focus of the night will be imagination. We’ll have five paintings around the wall, especially commissioned for the night to get us dreaming. We’ll have an excerpt from C S Lewis’ book, “The Great Divorce”.

We’ll use Mercy Me’s song, “I Can Only Imagine”, to capture something of the awe of being able to worship God in a new and fantastic setting.

Bart Millard wrote the song as he worked through the grief from his father dying. People kept telling him his father was ‘in a better place’. Not great news for a 19 year old. “I used to write the phrase ‘I can only imagine’ on anything I could get my hands on.” Millard says he did this for two reasons: “I did know he was in a better place and that would set me off thinking about what he was seeing. Getting strength he never had here and seeing things he couldn’t fathom here. And it really brought peace and hope to me. At the same time, I really wanted to know, ‘God, what’s so great about there that he would want to leave me or not come back?’ Call it selfish, but it’s just being human.”

So the song wasn’t written out of some super-spiritual motive to move closer to God. Instead, it was written by a grieving son crying out to his Creator for some sort of cosmic clue.The song lyrics emerged out of the phrase “I can only imagine” and were recorded on the album “Almost There”.

Bart and the Mercy Me team have worked with Jeff Kinsley to publish their book, “I Can Only Imagine”, a book on worship God with all of our lives. There’s a chapter on heaven, deconstructing cliched concepts of heaven and building a minimalist framework that sets the imaginative juices flowing.

I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk
By Your side
I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When Your face
Is before me
I can only imagine

{Chorus}:
Surrounded by Your glory,
what will my heart feel
Will I dance for You Jesus or in awe of You be still
Will I stand in Your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all

I can only imagine
I can only imagine
When that day comes
And I find myself
Standing in the Son
I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever
Forever worship You
I can only imagine