Crammed with Heaven is a monthly column in which Jenni Pretorius Hill shares stories of hope which bring Heaven’s perspective to Earth
During the Second World War, an American soldier who loved golf, was captured and held in a Japanese prison camp. To stay sane and keep his mind focused on freedom and a future – rather than on his terrible circumstances – he practiced golf every day in his imagination.
He pictured each hole on the familiar course back home. In his mind he stepped onto the tee box and lined up the ball with the hole. He could feel the grip in his hands and hear the whoosh of the club slicing the air as he made a smooth swing down the fairway. He saw himself selecting his nine-iron, making a clean strike, and watching the ball climb and arc before landing on the green and rolling toward the pin. Day after day, for months on end, he played the same round.
Weak and traumatised, he survived his captivity and returned home to experience the exhilarating freedom – and the long-anticipated return to the golf course. Before the war he had been a mediocre golfer, but to his astonishment, when he played again he found he could strike the ball almost exactly as he had imagined – like a professional. The intentionality and diligence of his daydreaming had been a powerful mental exercise that became a tangible reality.
I have written this story as I remember it from a Reader’s Digest magazine. When I was a child, they were stacked up in our bathroom, next to the loo. I read dozens of stories out of that pile, but this one has stayed with me. It bears testimony to the creative power of our imaginations. It’s not wishful thinking that we can pioneer a journey in our minds for our bodies and our experience to actually follow.
It also witnesses to the power of hope. Hope sets the stage for faith because it allows us to see an outcome in our imagination, and if I can see it, I can attach faith to it. God told Abraham to look at the host of stars. ‘Can you see how many they are? That’s what the future holds for you! An abundance! Blessings beyond what you can count.’ If you can see it, it’s a lot easier to believe for it.
When you look at your future, what do you see? A nothingness? Death from illness, financial ruin, divorce? This kind of imagining is powerful because it comes with a strong emotion – fear, despair, anxiety. So, now you have a hopeless vision in your mind’s eye as well as a powerful emotion in your heart and both these make it feel very real. It’s easy then to believe for it, in other words, to attach faith to it. But what if you start imagining something different? What if you begin picturing a different scenario altogether, one that offers you a glimpse of an overcoming, happy future? This vision fills your heart with another powerful emotion – hope! You can see it! You can feel it! It’s so real you can believe for it too!
If I was to live on a diet of terrible news, visual depictions of everything going wrong in the world, I would become depressed and hopeless. We understand this, but we do the very same thing with our negative imaginings and thoughts. We watch scenarios play out on the screens of our minds. I used to do this a lot; I would abuse this God-given gift and imagine terrible things: a car accident if a family was late home, a violent burglar when I was alone in the house… This beautiful gift became the very thing that cultivated fear in my life.
Our ability to create pictures in our heads and to recall memories from our past that we can step back into, is a wonderful God-given gift. But it becomes a curse when we don’t utilise it the way heaven intended. God wants you to imagine the good things He has for you to help you believe for them. He wants you to vividly remember the testimonies, the breakthroughs, the joy you experienced in your history, so those moments become a prophetic declaration for your future: do it again God! they shout. Too often, however, we replay the worst reels from our past. It becomes very difficult then to create a different scene for our futures.
The good news is God can heal your memories so that you can start thinking differently about your future. Your reality right now might be like a prison camp, and quite likely your walk-to-freedom will require courage and perseverance; but without hope neither is sustainable. Ask the Holy Spirit to partner with you in imagining a hope-filled future filled with things you don’t believe are possible – not some silly fantasy, but a God-inspired daydream. Don’t give up on seeing it, every day, in your mind’s eye. Play it out, fill in the details until it becomes your default, the Hope Channel your mind automatically tunes to. When you begin to see a good future, it becomes possible to believe for it, and that belief is the very thing that’s likely to determine its course.
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