Vision

A sign on a marquee outside a store said this: Vision is seeing things not as they are but as they one day will be. I think it was a tire store. I was out for a walk (in Fullerton) when I read that sign; I spent the rest of the walk thinking about it. The bible says that there will be a time when the lion lays down with the lamb; a time when there will be no more mourning or death; a time when a new heaven and a new earth will be created. That's the biblical vision. It's often difficult to claim that vision--not that I don't believe in it--but in a world of garbage-strewn streets and fluorescent strip malls and advertisements for flesh (just some of what I saw on my walk) it's hard to imagine something else, something better.

I think we're called to Realists and Optimists simultaneously. Realists who see this world for what it is and who get involved in the dirtiness and the brokenness of it, and Optimists who somehow, in the midst of the mess, cling to Hope for what one day will be.

Maybe because it's so hard to have that vision is what makes all the more important those occasional glimpses of the Kingdom God so graciously gives us. If I can somehow keep fresh in my mind the kind act of a stranger, the memory of hospitality extended, or the strange but beautiful community of the Church, vision is somewhat easier to maintain.