If Pets Had Thumbs

 If you look hard enough, you can discover that every day is a holiday of some sort. In the Wheatland Parish, we celebrate these holidays. Every Sunday, we find a way to acknowledge whatever strange or unusual holiday it is.

There's no religious or faith-based component to this, really. We're just having a little fun. I think God wants us to have fun in worship. Anyway, on a recent Sunday, we celebrated “If Pets Had Thumbs Day.” It's a real thing. We asked who in the congregation had ever wondered what things would be like if their pets had thumbs. As it turned out, there were a few people who had. Not surprisingly, they were kids.

See, as adults, we tend to think, “What do you mean, what if pet had thumbs? Pets don't have thumbs. That's a silly think to think about.” Kids, though, don't think that way. Kids have imagination. Kids have a sense of wonder at the world. Kids don't just see things that are and think they always have to be that way. Kids see things that are and wonder what it would be like if they were different. Kids wonder about things like “What if people had three arms? What if our ears were where our noses are? What if our pets had thumbs?”

And I wonder, “What if we could look at the world the way kids do? What if we never lost our sense of wonder at the world? What if we could see the magic involved in watching ants at work, or playing in fresh snow, or in coloring a picture? What if we could imagine a world in which we could move back and forth in time, or in which our imaginary friends could become real, or in which trees could talk to us? What if we could imagine a world in which our pets really did have thumbs?”

This week, I'd like you to try something. Try to imagine the world being different. Think of something that is not and imagine that it is. Or, think of something that is and imagine that it is not. Or, think of things that are and imagine that they were different.

Use your imagination. After all, the first step to making the world different is to imagine that it could be. If we want the world to be better, we need to use our imagination.