I've grown weary of the word, "vision," I'm almost afraid to use it. Generally, if we hear it from a pulpit, it's usually just the preface to a building campaign or some gradiose ministry scheme that usually has some other name than Christ's attached to it. OK, maybe I'm a touch jaded and callous, but I have to tell you, I've grown tired of the institutional, the organizational, and the impositional in the name of God Almighty.
Nonetheless, Christians need a vision, for life without hope is the soil of bitterness, nothing good grows in it. We don't need a Pied Piper, maybe not even John Piper, but we do need to see Christ in us, the hope of glory. We need a vision birthed in the dark of a tomb but risen to the glory of the throne of God. Not a vision of something of this world that will burn with this world: not something that within a generation or two will operate on principles the opposite of those it was started with just in order to keep it going. We do need a vision bigger than ourselves, but we have to see it in ourselves. It's Christ in us.
Jesus never built a hospital, an orphanage, a school, or an auditorium that would put Broadway to shame. He scarcely had a following when it was all said and done. Did it bother him? He was the only person ever to live for whom being full of himself was a good thing. I'd like to be full of him too. These last couple of years have been difficult and dark ones for me, vision killing years--maybe for you too. There is a hope rising though, finally, and it doesn't include a building, it won't make a splash, it doesn't even need a people! It does, however, need a Person.
