Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The Vision

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 crusts 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 to the nations,
they need no passport.
People write 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,
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 discipl(in)ed--
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 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 weirdoes!
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.

--Pete Grieg

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