Daydream or Vision?

It’s easy for us to daydream, isn’t it?

God, on the other hand, is not a daydreamer.  He creates visions. 

It’s easy for us to daydream, isn’t it? To wish for things.  Anything, really.

With God, He’s not a daydreamer.  He’s a vision-caster.  He creates visions.  Then shares them.  They are concrete desires in our hearts for His plans and destinies.  For nations. For the world.  Even for us human beings.

That’s essentially what His written Word is, the Bible.  It’s His vision for our lives.  For us to live out.  It culminates with Jesus, being made flesh and blood like us.  Who came to be with us in our everyday lives.

In Habakkuk, an often overlooked prophet in the Old Testament, God tells him something specific.  As God is casting His vision to Habakkuk, He instructs him, “Write the vision . . . If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:2-3, ESV).

This is relevant to me because it is the place in the Bible where God led me back in 2007, after I had left the Senate and started studying theology at Oxford.  Previously, while still in the Senate, God had revealed His vision to me, but I had not written it down.

In truth, I think, I was hesitating to own it.  I thought that if I didn’t write it down, it wasn’t something I had to take responsibility for, something I had to do.

And yet, I knew God wanted me to own it. To write it down.

So one afternoon, in Oxford, I started to write.  Here’s the gist:

I see a picture of breathing, which mirrors the picture of “breathing life” taken out of Genesis 1 and 2. Expressly, God breathes life into human beings and, therefore, into all human relationships:

- God breathes life into men.

- God breathes life into women.

- We exhale identity, our dignity, value, and worth as men and women.

- We exhale respect for one another.

In creation, the world was framed in a relational state of being – everything created was made for the other and to work in tandem together.  Nothing was made to be alone or isolated, without someone else. In short, without community. 

Since we are each created in God’s sacred, beautiful image, our individual lives have:

-Dignity, value, and worth both individually and in relation to each other, from God.

-We have the opportunity to impart respect to each other.

See how basic this is?  How embryonic it is?  It says a lot, but is thin, in fact, scarce, on detail, not quite fully formed.  Looking back on it now, I kind of see what God was doing.  He wanted me to get out of my head what He had written on my heart.  A vision.

Really, I think, my mission from God.

One that I would have so many questions about.  And so many starts and stops through the subsequent years.

One where a lot of waiting would be involved.  Still is.

So, how do I see this vision today?  Why does it matter?

This is what I want to explore next time.