Image-Conscious Devotions

Today my pastor, Mark Janke, invited us into his personal relationship with Jesus by sharing a devotional act he has employed regularly in his life. He will often picture Jesus turning towards him with an encouraging smile and saying, "Come with me." In moments that present challenge, depression, or anxiety, the image of Jesus steadily saying "Come on, we can do this!" may be just what we need. This form of the Good News--an image in the mind--may not be as common to us as a Scripture verse or a Christian song, but is this difference in form any reason to discredit image-conscious devotions?

In a recent paperback entitled, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God's Love, Milton Vincent tells readers how essential it is to experience the gospel daily. As good biblical counseling friends of mine often say, quoting from Jeremiah, "Our hearts are desperately wicked," or sick. We need to take the elixer of the Gospel every day to cure our souls. The Gospel Elixer has been preserved for us in a Bottle called the Bible, as we surely already know full well. We make the mistake of assuming, however, that it is enough to look at this Bottle, observe it, interpret it, and make speculations about it, without ever actually drinking from it. Our experience of it is dry, tasteless. We don't feel its effects. This, I think, is why Jesus told his followers that it was not enough to assent to his teachings; they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Of course, he was speaking of spiritual realities, but to do so he directs our minds to the physical, to the material, to something that can be seen, tasted, and felt. He wants us to experience him. To help us, he has given us images (e.g. bread, wine, blood, flesh, parables, baptism, etc.). In our devotions and meditations, would it not be appropriate to do just what my pastor does--to let an image into our conscious thoughts and feelings, and through them, to our perceptions, judgments, and actions?