Week Two: Vision.
Day One (Day Eight):
Proverbs 29:18 tells us “Where there is no vision the people perish”
An exercise in frustration is trying to describe colours to a blind man. Sometimes no amount of words is sufficient. We need vision. We need to see in order to understand the concept.
The celebration of Pentecost is marked fifty days after the Jewish New Year. It celebrates the first harvest of the New Years planting. Pentecost began after the Jewish nation walked away from the bondage of building idols in Egypt. Through the miraculous intervention of God, a new nation began a march toward a land they could call their own. A land God had promised them. Their journey could have taken fifty days; instead it took forty years. But that’s another story.
The vision we will be discussing this week deals with death and resurrection: the end of life as previously known and understood into a new resurrected life walking with our miracle working God. The nation finds themselves between a rock and a hard place many times. But it is critical to move forward. In fact there is no way back. To stay, at best would be more servitude and persecution but more likely death at the hands of their captors. To stay would be to deny their God’s miraculous call. To stay meant certain death. To move forward would be to take God at his word: believing and doing what they were told would guarantee resurrected life; a new life like never before known.
That kind of believing is only possible with a miracle working ever present God. Why? Because like their forefather Abraham who did not see or know the land unto which God promised that he would receive, he believed God. God became his vision. That’s the way it would be for the nation of God; obeying what God said was their only way forward. Believing and acting on what God said would mean receiving the promise. They had never seen the land. They did not know the route in which to take. They had to look to God, listen to what He had to tell them and then follow.
Vision moves us forward. We need vision. We need to be moving toward what we perceive to be our goal. And as we set our sights on that future hope, the vision will become more clearly defined with each forward step.