You know those moments when you feel your own power? Whether you believe that it’s God’s power working through you, or it’s a result of the field of energy you’re currently existing in due to your circumstances or the people in your life…or you simply set your focus on something so powerfully that you actually make something happen as a result. Regardless of what you believe about God or the universe…I think we all feel these moments from time to time. They are a part of our existence on this planet.
The funny thing is that kids engage in believing in the impossible all the time. Because the world is big and they sense its power and its magic. My kids have been blown away by learning about what an adult would consider the basic facts of our existence. This thing called gravity holds us on the surface of the earth. Dinosaurs used to roam the same planet that we inhabit. There are endless ways in our economy to make money. If you get struck by lightning, there is a chance you could become a savant (they love this one). Stonehenge.
But then as kids grow up, they get consumed with learning the lessons of their own experiences. And kids turn into adults whose limits of belief often reach to only what they’ve seen or felt or heard of in their own lives. I think it’s a tragedy that we limit our own ability to hope in such a way. Just because we haven’t done something before, or experienced radical results in our own lives, doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. It just means that there could potentially be so much more to come!
Where is the danger in fervent hope? In blind faith? In excitement for the unknown? God created the entire universe, for goodness’ sake. Or science and physics created the universe, for goodness’ sake! What else could God and science and physics be capable of in our lives? Look at the complexity and wonder of nature—the formation of the earth, the landscape, the life filling it. The potential of this life is so much bigger than the empirical evidence of our little daily experiences. We are intense, active, very alive bundles of energy. Surely there is potential in our lives for an exorbitant number of different actions to take place.
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
– Plato
Sure, you can argue against the “anything is possible” axiom with extreme examples that defy the known laws of physics and gravity. You can’t shrink a live human into a shape small enough to fit into a coffee cup. (Unless you created the world’s biggest coffee cup, of course.) But I don’t think that’s the kind of inspiration we’re looking for when we approach life with an “anything is possible” attitude. I think it’s more about what we believe is possible for the path and experience of our own existence. That we could achieve a certain physical accomplishment, that we could have wealth, that we could have respect, that we could be loved well beyond the sum of love that we’ve ever received in the past. We assign “impossible” on these incredibly reachable ideas just because of the simple fact that we haven’t experienced them yet. And for what gain? To prove to ourselves that these things really are impossible? Where is the victory in that?
