Child-like Imagination

I sometimes wonder when I lost my imagination.
In my backyard there used to be this very tiny patch of trees and brush that my brother and I (and whoever was with us) would play in constantly. It was a place where we would try, and fail, to build numerous forts. I think at one point I imagined it being the home of a monster, making it all the more exciting to explore in there.
My toys always became actors in a dramatic play filled with action, romance, and tragedy. My Luke Skywalker action figure was always the hero, and my T-Rex toy was his trusty sidekick. They would face the evils of the Black Hot Wheel car, and try to rescue the girl from the bad guy. During the final climactic battle the T-Rex figure would almost always take a bullet for Luke Skywalker and a long dramatic death scene would follow. I didn't always just act this out in my head. Sometimes I would do the different voices and sound effects for everything that was happening in my little production.
I used to think that trees made wind when they were sick, a windy day was just a bunch of sneezing trees.
When did I lose my imagination? When did the patch of trees and brush in the backyard become just...a patch of trees and brush? When did my toys become life-less pieces of plastic? When did the trees stop moving themselves?
Well, I grew up. Somethings that we imagine...just aren't "true" I guess. Should maturing mean that we lose our sixth sense of imagination? Shouldn't instead our imagination mature with us?
Of course, there are the people who haven't lost their imaginations. I envy the poets, the architects, the musicians, the artists, the photographers, the filmmakers...all of whom still use their imaginations to the fullest extent. The best art, the best writing, the best music... isn't the kind that denies reality, but that helps us look beyond reality to maybe see or feel something higher and better than what mere reality has to offer.
I wish I could see the world through they eyes of a child again, just for a little while. I want to look beyond what really is and to deeply ask "why?" without really knowing why I'm asking "why?" in the first place.
I think that without a lack of imagination that our worship, and even our view of God, can become stale and boring. Having no imagination also seems to automatically limit God. I say this because if we aren’t imagining God in any new ways then we have placed him into a category that he just doesn’t fit into. By having a lack of imagination we aren’t letting God be who He is. If we use our imaginations more then we can construct new and interesting ways to get people to look beyond our reality and to use their own imaginations. Without imagination we just let the world (and ourselves) be what it is, and never anything more than that. So it goes that if we don’t use our imaginations not only are we limiting God but we are also limiting ourselves.
I want to imagine a new way of living, a new way of viewing life, a new way of viewing God. I want to share my imagination with others with the hope that maybe they'll be encouraged to use their imaginations a little bit more as well.
Without imagination the world becomes just a painful place filled with famine, war, disease, and hate. If we refuse to use our imaginations then this is all we are ever going to see and know. But if we have the imagination, the creativity to look past the famine, the war, the disease, and the hate to something better and higher then we don't have accept that our reality is the way things have to be.
Imagine that.