Vision

"Our culture lacks vision in almost every arena.  How do you get vision?  You have to be passionate about something.  You must visualize the life you want to create and then be disciplined enough to get there.  Really, accomplishing your dream is not so much about mechanics and opportunity as it is about character qualities:  self denial, perseverance, commitment, focus." - Joel Salatin, You Can Farm

What is your vision for your life?  What is my vision for mine?

More specifically, what is your - or my - vision of our life for 2013?

I know individuals who are more passionate about sports teams they watch or the state of their automobile than are passionate about something in their life that will lead them somewhere.

Salatin is right that we no longer talk in terms of vision.  Vision, if anything, has come to mean a sort of metaphysical visitation - not a practical sort of thing that we can use in our daily lives.

But think for a moment:  those (at least in the Bible) that walked away from a vision of God came away passionate.  Isaiah in Isaiah 6, Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1 and 2 - even Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration - all walked away from their visions passionate about their calling and their God.  That vision sustained them, drove them on in the face of life.

But can the same level and intensity of vision be applied now, to our own daily lives?  Of course it can.  It's just that we have forgotten how to do it.

Think back to a time when you were really enthusiastic about something:  a new sport, a new author, a new hobby.  Thoughts of it filled you at all times.  You could not visualize anything that did not involve this thing.  You slept it, dreamed about it, lived it. 

For most of us, that is where it ends.  Life has a way of overtaking our visions and enthusiasms.  They don't play out as we expected or we had to get a "real" job or it did not live up to the promise that it offered.  We come to believe that visions are for the young and (perhaps) foolish, that we dwell in the world of reality and practicality.

But what if we are wrong?  What if is not the vision seekers that are unrealistic, but we who have allowed ourselves to believe that visions can never come true?

The reality is that every day there are individuals who are out living their visions - their dreams -while the rest of us plug along thinking that such things are simple not possible.

But apparently such things are.

We only need vision.