Q: Godsight: Renewing the Eyes of Our Hearts has such a striking cover. Is there a story to it?

A: Yes. In a popular passage from The Weight of Glory C. S. Lewis wrote: "If we consider the staggering nature of the rewards promised...We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” That is why I wrote Godsight—to turn our imaginations to the enjoyment of God, the “holiday at the sea.” Because we don’t just live from our beliefs, but our desires.

Although when he designed the cover Josh Dennis was not thinking about how often my book uses this quote, in a remarkable “coincidence” he presents the silhouette of a person who has trekked up the final sand dune, and arms high, revels in the glory of his ocean-front view. I can’t imagine a better illustration of celebrating that "holiday at the sea."
 

Q: Godsight addresses “overcoming the seduction of our imagination.” What do you mean by that?

A: I mean overcoming the barrage of images that stoke our discontent with what we do have and our longings for what we don't. And also the temptations to fulfill those desires on a screen, whether the screen is in our heads or in the real world. Godsight offers a vision of the beauty and splendor of God even more compelling than our super-sized American dreams of success or idyllic romantic fantasies.
 

Q: Why do you think the seduction of our imagination is such a challenge in today's culture?

A: Writing in Psychology Today, Hollywood publicist Michael Levine explains how he “hates” beauty because it makes him so discontent with the women actually available to him. He reminds us that until the recent past many people lived in small communities where they would not encounter more than five hundred people in their entire lives, and “very few were very attractive.” Today you can turn on MTV and see 500 beautiful people in an hour. Our lives are wallpapered with images of things we'll never have and adventures will never live. Before Martha Stewart and HGTV I never knew how plain my table looked. Rather than seeing a table to be decorated, Godsight encourages the reader to imagine instead a table as a kingdom place of comfort and encouragement, even warfare.
 

Q: Why was the seduction of your imagination such a challenge for you personally?

A: When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis I could see my world shrink as surely as Alice’s down the rabbit hole—a life of chronic disease and pain. No cure. I felt like I had all this sparkle and talent that was sinking beneath illness and fatigue. I prayed what I now look back and call “St. Lael's prayers of resignation.”

I watched a lot of night-time TV. I’m a creative person. I could write fairly engaging stories in my head where I could still ride the sunbeams, rack up the successes, and receive the appreciation I longed for.

I liked to think I was indulging in a gray area of behavior, but I began to sense Jesus wagging his head at me. Godsight tells how God grows our vision for him and his Kingdom. How we can find so much joy and Life that the distractions and temptations to escape can no longer compete.
 

Q: As you tell your story in Godsight, you describe how you grew up as a “Tap Dancing Cosmic Blonde.” What does that mean?

A: I grew up tap dancing with one foot in God's Kingdom Story, and one foot in my own small performance story. Down deep I really believed that life is a stage. And if I'm pretty and smart enough, and tap-dance well enough I'll be a star.

Although my hair was brown, I was a “Cosmic Blonde.” The way author David Brooks explains it (with deep apologies to anyone whose hair happens to be blonde) a “Cosmic Blonde” is a condition of the soul—jet skiing along the surface of life, oblivious to the deeper meanings of the story or motivations of the heart. I tap danced my way through my childhood, youth and early adult years self-satisfied, book-smart but unreflective and enjoying the party of life. The “simple” soul in Proverbs on a winning streak. Perhaps in affluent America most of us grow up a little Blonde.

Godsight is a very personal story of how God has transformed this Tap Dancing Cosmic Blonde into a kingdom “Redemptress.”
 

Q: How did that happen? What did you learn about what the Bible teaches about how God  grows our vision and passion for him?

A: I learned that there is no 1, 2, 3 formula for seeking God with all our heart and finding him. It is a work of God's Spirit in which we cooperate, but don't seem to have control. Godsight is a study of the Scriptures that tell us how we come to see God and desire what we see. It’s also a story of how God has captured my imagination and changed my dreams because my story is a case study true to Scripture of how he shows himself to us…

…through the enablement to choose his dreams even in the midst of pain. Sometimes when we choose God it is a way out of suffering. But sometimes it is a way into it as God takes away or exposes the emptiness of the things we look to for Life.

…through the people he sends to cast his vision into our lives—those people celebrating on top of the sand dunes whose vision enlarges our own.

…through a deeper imagining of his kingdom Story—the setting, characters, the creation/fall/ redemption plotline with flashbacks and suspense—that displays the glory of his heart.

…through comparing our dreams to both God’s dreams and Satan’s dreams and considering the direction in which our own dreams are moving.

…through learning to seek Him with an all-our-heart intensity that honors his desire for us.

…through pain and humiliation that exposes the pride that hides and drives us straight into his arms of grace.

…through a refreshed vision of eternity. As we turn our imaginations toward the glimpses we’re given of Jesus waiting for us in his City, we see the splendor that surpasses all the mud pies in the slum.

Copyright © 2005 Lael Arrington