Jared Patrick Boyd - Imaginative Prayer: A Yearlong Guide for Your Childs Spiritual Formation

Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or a moralism. Christianity is instead an encounter, a love story; it is an event.

Pope Benedict XVI

What if education... is not primarily about ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? The education of desire... requires the pedagogical formation of our imagination.

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom

This book is about connection. As a father of four girls one of my greatest desires is to pass on to them a deep understanding and awareness of the experience of God. My hope is that they would feel connected to God and the story God is unfolding in their lives and in the world around them. Will they see themselves as part of Gods story? Will they feel close and connected to God as they navigate decisions that come their way and pursue risks on the horizon? Will they say yes to all that God is inviting them into? This book is about connection because of the way Jesus asks us to imagine our life with himhe is the vine, his Father is the gardener, and we are connected to him. This is how we bear fruit. This is the image he gives us. This is what he asks us to imagine.

This book is also about formation. Spiritual formation... is the intentional and God-ward reorientation and re-habituation of human experience. Whenever were intentionally doing something to shift our experience or understanding of God, were involved in spiritual formation. When were working, in response to Gods grace, to shift our thoughts, the patterns of our relationships, and our actions toward a greater alignment with the life and teachings of Jesus, we are doing the work of spiritual formation.

And when we help others in their journey of formation, we become connected to them and their story.

We share in their experience, and we too are formed by it.

This book is an invitation to connection with your child and to your childs spiritual formation.

In my late twenties, as I tried to settle into adulthood (and feeling quite unsettled), I began meeting with a spiritual directorsomeone with formal training in helping me pay closer attention to my conversation with God and the movements in my soul. I began to notice the story of my own formational journey, which took me all the way back to childhood. This wasnt therapy. It was a form of prayerful attentiveness to how God has been present to me throughout the seasons of my life. It is an attentiveness that seeks to name Gods activity and my responses. One glaring observation was that while I had a powerful encounter with the love and grace of God when I said yes to Jesus at age ten, my next