Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 (NIV) 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. 9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Peace and prosperity are the twin hopes that have driven humanity for as long as we have a history of our hopes. The potential of our hopes is that they are very close to vision. A vision called Abraham out of Haran and sent him on a journey to a land called PROMISE. A vision caught Moses in his tracks and brought him to Pharaoh with a command from God, “Let my people go.” A vision pulled David from tending sheep that he might bring peace and prosperity to Israel. The vision came to each one in a different way, with different promises and different commands. But always the vision was from God and for the fulfillment of God’s purpose on earth. Jesus came preaching the vision He called the Kingdom of God, a vision He said had come true in Him and would continue to come true in the days and centuries ahead.
What is this thing called vision that figures so prominently in the lives of God’s people? It is a conviction about the way God wants life to be and an understanding of how we are to contribute to that life. A vision is an overriding motive for our life. Do we have any kind of vision for our life this coming year about the kind of person God wants us to be, about the kind of things God wants us to accomplish? Even if we cannot see the vision in detail can we see an outline of God’s vision for our life?
Some people have a dream for their life rather than a vision. A dream is our desire for the future, a picture we have in our mind of the way we want our life to be some day. A dream comes from our own wishes and desires. A vision comes to us from God. A vision is something received rather than conceived. It comes to us rather than simply from within us.
A message of our culture is that belief in God may give some comfort, but in the real world listen only to yourself. Other claims are that God gave visions to people in times past but does so no longer, or that God gives vision still, only we are deaf and blind and callous to the vision. Is God silent? Or do we fail to give proper attention to the Word, to the picture of the vision given to us? Could it be that receiving the Vision is as simple and as difficult as giving time and attention to what God is giving us?
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 1993
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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