Vision. For years and years I’ve heard about 20/20 vision. I don’t know if it was most correctly referred to as normal, or perfect, but 20/20 vision meant you could see just as you were meant to. I’m not sure when I last had 20/20 vision. I started wearing glasses in 7th grade before I transitioned to contacts two years later. But even before I finally got to be called “four-eyes” by those accepting and gracious middle schoolers, I had finagled my way out of wearing glasses for a couple years. When it came time to take the eye test in health class, I sat in the front until it was my turn, memorizing the eye chart so I could fake my way through it. But it all caught up with me at age thirteen.
Playing sports, I always had pretty good vision. That just meant that I could see what was going on as a play unfolded on the field or court. But if my contacts had popped out, I couldn’t have seen my shoes on my own feet. The dictionary defines vision simply as being able to see. Beyond that, though, we have to further describe just how well or how poorly someone can see. They might have the 20/20 version, or be metaphorically blind as a bat or have eagle eyes.
Another meaning of vision is the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom. Having this kind of vision requires a completely different kind of eyes than the two that we each were born with. The elders at our church have been working on and discussing over the past several months its vision as it pertains to the near and not so immediate future of the church. That vision is being shared with the church body these last three weeks of January, highlighting the focus of discipleship and prayer, fellowship and hospitality, and praising our God. Admittedly, it takes very little imagination or wisdom to realize that a church should be about these things. Our vision comes from Acts 2:42 and the verses following, and there God shows us how He grew His early church. The elders simply want our church to be a church the way God wants His church.
As you hear more about who we want to be as a family of followers of Christ, the challenge will be to use your imagination and wisdom, as God reveals it to you when you seek Him, to be a part of making God’s vision the one for our church. We elders do not know the future, nor have we received special instructions directly from God. But in seeking Him in how to direct His flock, our intentions are to rely on His Word and to grow the relationships we have with our Savior both corporately and individually. And our prayer is that 2019 and beyond finds us closer to Him and closer to one another, for the glory of our great God.
Rich Holt
On Things Above 