The Vision...

If you haven't heard The Vision by Pete Greig yet...

So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?” I open my mouth, and the words come out like this…

The vision?

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 laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could

eat caviar on Monday and crust on Tuesday

They wouldn’t even notice. They know the

meaning of the Matrix.

the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind,

they belong to the nations,

they need no passport.

People write their addresses in pencil

and wonder at their strange existence.

They are free

yet they are slaves

of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision? The vision is holiness

that hurts the eyes.

It makes children laugh and adults angry.

It gave up the game of minimum integrity

Long ago to reach for the stars.

It scorns the good and strains for the best.

It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers

from every secret motive,

every private conversation.

It loves people away from their suicide leaps,

their Satan games.

This is an army

that would lay down its life for the cause.

A million times a day

Its soldiers choose to lose that they might

one day win the great

“Well done” of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical

on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don’t need 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, foundation 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. Every soldier would take a

bullet for his comrade at arms.

The tattoo on their back boasts

“for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Sacrifice fuels the fire

of victory in their upward eyes.

Winners.

Martyrs.

Who can stop them? Can hormones hold

them back? Can failure succeed?

Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays

Like a dying man with groans beyond

talking, with warrior cries,

sulphuric tears and

great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.

Watching:

24-7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give:

Breaking the rules,

shaking mediocrity from its cozy little

hide,

laying down their rights and their precious

little wrongs,

laughing at labels,

fasting essentials.

The advertisers cannot mold 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 inside).

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, guilty as hell:

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 subconscious sings.

They had a blood transfusion with

Jesus.

Their words make demons scream

in shopping malls. Don’t you hear

them coming?

Herald the weirdos!

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

by these children of another

dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound 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.

How do i know?

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 3-D.

And my feeble,

whispered,

faithless prayer

invokes a thunderous,

resounding,

bone-shaking

great “Amen!”

from countless angels,

from heroes of the faith,

from Christ Himself.

And he is the original dreamer,

the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.