No Imagination? Get One.

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ."   ... Romans 8:37

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So yesterday I splurged and actually paid for a kindle book (albeit with a gift card).  I saw this title and thought, "Perfect!" :

Quarter Acre Farm: How I Kept The Patio, Lost The Lawn And Fed My Family For A Year  by Spring Warren.

Wow.

I mean, when we drove away from our 4-acre farm, the moving van held boxes of my "We Bought a Farm" type books, but have I read any of them these past 2 1/2 suburban years?

No. 

They all felt like items from a past season, too been-there-done-that-thank-goodness-it's-over-ish.

Yet lately whenever I walk the snowy path to the garage for the birdseed then pour it into the feeder, I gaze around my (white, frozen) yard and ask myself, "How can I grow even more vegetables, fruits and herbs this year? What if I move the lettuce to the strip beside the back door? How much longer can I expand my 'farm garden bed' this Spring?"

You know, "How can I make my tiny patch of a yard more resemble a mini-farm?"

Those have been my thoughts out there and then bam! Amazon sent me an email filled with book titles That May Interest Me and there she was, Spring Warren, who opened for me a whole book genre I'd not considered lately because, well, I am slow of mind. :)

We can customize our lives, see them become what God intended. Make them into, at the very least, a version of what we long for. But not if we make excuses instead of steps. Or if we let our imagination grow orange with rust or don't study or plan or, with faith, pull ourselves up off the couch. 

Or if we forget to ask God and Grace for their ideas, insisting instead, to plod along aimlessly with our own.

We weren't created to be helpless whiners nor are we victims. We are children of the God who created imaginations so to renew our hope and keep us going ... and the God who loves making ways where there are none. 

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“As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, “The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars” (5).” 
― Leland Ryken, The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing


Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes – The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.   Elizabeth Barrett Browning


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"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."   ...Hebrews 11:1

"For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland." ....Isaiah 43:15-19

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."   ... 2 Corinthians 5:7

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If you enjoyed Amy Stewart's From The Ground Up  you'll quite likely enjoy Quarter Acre Farm.

Oh, and here is Spring Warren's blog which she kept until 2012. Today I'm hoping to check out the archives.