My grandparents had an old stationary exercise bike in their basement – the one with a fan in front. It sat in the corner by the shelf with pictures of grandkids, cousins, uncles, aunts and siblings.
I used to pretend that the stationary bike was a motorcycle. Even now, I can picture the streets whizzing by as I pedaled away from the evil queen, the bandits, the pirates.
I escaped on that bike – not only from the villains of my imagination, but from my boring reality. The world before me fell away as I jumped into the world I created.
Escaping reality through fantasy is only a distraction from the adventure God has planned for us. Author, singer and songwriter Andrew Peterson wrote of his own gravitation towards escapism in his book “Adorning the Dark.”
“A persistent fear sizzled in my heart, a fear that there existed no real adventure other than the one on the page, and that I was doomed never to know it. Doomed to a life of failure,” Peterson wrote. “There’s that word again (failure). I felt called to adventure but saw no way to get there, so instead I read about adventures and kept that dream alive by keeping it to myself.”
Peterson went on to write about the redemption he found in Christ. Through Scripture, God renewed Peterson’s imagination. He found a purpose in this world through the promise of the next.
Living in another world is wonderful. We can thrive off of high adventure or step into another person’s shoes. I can escape from my own problems by dealing with someone else’s. But eventually we must return home. We must exit the wardrobe and face reality.
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a palace for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4 (ESV)
We are discontent in this world because we were not made for it. God has given us hope for a future where all will be restored.
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both express this longing partnered with hope.
“Tolkien and Lewis held the fabric of Narnia or Middle-earth in one hand and clutched ours in the other, building a bridge so we could set out for perilous realms and return safely with some of the beauty we found there,” Peterson wrote in “Adorning the Dark.”
Our imaginations are a gift from God. We are made in His image and are creative just as He is. However, we must not value our own worlds or our own distractions above the gut wrenching, heart swelling, beauty of this world.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to riding motorcycles in my grandparents’ basement. But stationary bikes are not going anywhere. We must step into the life God has given us while hoping in the restoration of the next.
