The Vision – by Pete Greig
So this guy comes up to me and says:
“What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They are people who write their addresses in pencil
mobile like the wind, belonging to the nations.
and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
A love that loves people away from their suicide leaps
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. No need of fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground
And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.
Laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive
On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives – swap seats with the man on death row. A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. He breathes out, they breathe in.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centers flea.
Don’t you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.
Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
