Imaginary Friend

There are some ideas that are clearly passed on from kid to kid, like jinx or cooties. They are passed down through the ages by one child communicating to another and that second child seeing something worthwhile in them and continuing to do them.  Thus, if my grandmother, my future son, and myself all ran into the kid versions of ourselves, we could all enjoy a multicolored, folded piece of paper that, when used properly, tells us our fortunes.

That being said, I wonder how imaginary friends have withstood the years. So many children have them. Is there something innate inside each of us that tells our little minds that when there is no one to play with, we can just make someone up? Or does one kid walk up on another looking crazy, talking to no one and say to him or her self, "I want what that kid has?"

We have some family friends who have a young daughter who has an imaginary friend named "Sarah." One day she calmly walked in the living room and announced with little remorse that Sarah had died in a car wreck. The next day, she was talking to her again. Can you have a ghost of an imaginary friend?

My brother must have been a born leader. At different times, he would have an imaginary friend, an imaginary hockey team, or an imaginary choir. Is there a conceptual limit to the amount of human beings your mind can  create?

Here is a list I have compiled for the top five reasons that imaginary friends are great: (In no particular order)
1. They always share your opinions.
2. They never gossip about you.
3. They are always there when you need them and not when you don't.
4. You can tell them to do anything.
5. They are always ready to play.

Here is a list of where imaginary friends lack:
1. You can't wrestle with them.
2. You always have to carry the conversation.
3. No one else seems to see them.
4. They have all of your bad habits.
5. They bear so little impact on your actual life.

I think that sometimes, we use Jesus like an imaginary friend.
We only talk to him when we need him.
We do all the talking.
He shares a suspicious amount of our opinions.
We swear that he is there, but others see nothing of him in our lives.

In high school, I was a late-night janitor at my church. There was another janitor there named James. James was at least in his mid-fifties and had been working at the church for a long time. There were rumors that when people walked up on him working in the night, that he was always talking to himself, but I had never heard him until one night. I was asking him about something ans when I was walking away, I heard him say, "Yeah God, that Josh is a good kid." It turns out that he wasn't talking to himself the whole time, he was talking to God. Then it hit me, God wasn't an imaginary friend to him, He was real. Instead of talking to his conscience or just trying to go through life thinking for himself, James was constantly talking to God.

What if our interior monologues were dialogues with the creator of the universe. What if when we were alone or in a crowd of people, we communicated with God. What if we lived like God was no longer imaginary, but more than we can imagine. I am excited to see what happens when we try.