In his blog today Seth Godin talks about what happens in between frames in comics. We use our imagination to fill in the action we don’t see on paper. We don’t need to know everything. We can work it out for ourselves.
The same thing happens when we read a book. We visualise. We create a rich image based on the small amount of information we get from the book. That’s why movies of our favourite books often don’t live up to our expectations because they aren’t how we imagined they would look.
It is our nature to imagine and create and find links.
I wonder how many preachers have worked this out? And why Jesus told parables without explaining them?
and thats why I prefer a good book over a good film! But not everyone enjoys filling the gaps – maybe thats the same for the parables – seeing what is not there is difficult.