Without Vision, the People Perish
Without vision, the people perish.
Everything that has been done in the world, or done in your life, always begins with vision. Everything has been created twice. First in the mind of the one envisioning something as possible, and only secondly in day-to-day life.
Think about it.
Coco Chanel had a vision of women free of corsets. Henry Ford had a vision of a horse-less carriage. Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry had architectural visions. Steve Jobs had a vision of what the personal computer could and would do, and then went on to visions of iPods and iPhones and iPads (oh my!).
You need a vision for your life. And for each segment of your life.
But most of us are reacting to life. We’re letting life happen to us.
We’re reacting to the busy-ness, the pulls of people around us, keeping our head down, never stopping to take a look at the 30,000 foot view. Before we know it, we’re pulled so far off track we don’t even recognize where we are anymore.
It doesn’t matter what area of your life we’re talking about, or if we’re talking about your life as a whole, it all starts with vision.
Why does this apply to everything in your life?
Because the way you change one thing is the way you change everything.
If you want to speak a new language, you’ll only make the commitment and see it turn into a lasting change in your life, if you have a vision of what speaking that language will do for you, who you will be, and what you can do, if you speak that language.
If you want to lose weight, you have a vision first of what you will look like, the added energy and vitality it will bring, what you will be able to do and accomplish in your life.
Without vision, you not only drift through life, you have no idea what direction you’re drifting.
You’re just being carried and tossed around by the waves, rather than swimming out determined to catch and ride the rhymes and rhythms of Grace.
And you end up someplace you never wanted to be in the first place.
More about your vision in today’s video VLOG:
P.S. To get clear about your vision – to look at the fears surrounding it and what that tells you — and to turn your vision into a powerful declaration, sign up for the newsletter in the right hand sidebar and get my free instantly downloadable Declaration Destination program including the mp3 audio + workbook. Click in the sidebar to get access now.
Where is the White Space in Your Life?
Many of us are overwhelmed. We’re over-scheduled. We’re over-burdened. We’re over-committed. And while we’re running here and there and everywhere, we’re checking Facebook, Twitter and email all at the same time. Many of us have become addicted to being busy.
But here’s the thing.
There has to be some space built into your life. Space where nothing is scheduled, where flexibility and spontaneity won’t throw us entirely off balance.
When there’s no white space in your life, you miss out on the things that are most fulfilling. Often, you miss out on your purpose. You miss out on opportunity. You miss out on interruptions. You’re too crammed to be interrupted. But ‘interrupted’….is often where God comes in.
More in today’s video:
Is there white space in your life?
If not, what are some things you can begin to say no to in order to clear space out?
Where are the pockets of time you can claim as ‘open’?
Music Mondays (Let It Be)
Music is powerful. I know. We all know this. Music is the language of the heart and has the power to touch the soul in a way that sometimes words alone just can’t capture. It changes our mood, our mind, calms our spirits, uplifts our hearts, and even brings us closer to God in worship.
People who know me for more than five minutes know what a Beatles fan I am. (And yes. Paul’s my favorite. Paul is my favorite apostle. And Paul is my favorite Beatle. Go figure.)
This song has been a bit of an anthem throughout my life. It’s one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano when I was about 12. (I started at 7. And…I still have that book, though this song fell out long ago.) When I was in college and feeling homesick or….whatever…I’d sneak off to the piano practice rooms and play this.
It’s a reminder to leave it alone. Hands off. Surrender. Give whatever it is up to God and let it be.
So, for today….a little music for your soul. Take a deep breath. Chill. And smile. Remembering to….Let it be.
How to Find Peace in the Midst of Chaos (A Repost)
If you’re stressed, overwhelmed and overloaded, you can find peace right now, right where you are. It’s simple to do, but we tend to forget.
In my short 3 minute video VLOG here, I share how:
P.S. If you like this video, please feel free to click through below and share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or wherever you hang out on the web. And don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter in the righthand sidebar.
Forgiveness & Letting Go
You can’t hold on to your history while simultaneously stepping into your destiny.
There was a time when I honestly believed that I had no resentments, nothing from my past I was hanging on to. I was falling for that idea that we were made, and called, just to be nicer. We weren’t meant to just be nicer. We’re meant to be powerful.
Many of us fall into that trap. We are so busy, we haven’t even stopped to consider what’s chipping away at our hears and at our souls.
Let it go.
Anything you’re holding on to is holding on to you.
Every morning, things are new. Every day is a blank canvas. It’s amazing how free you can be once you truly, and deeply let go of your past.
Your past only determines your future if you hang on to it.
More, in today’s VLOG:
How To Try Not To Change The World
This week has been a struggle for me. If we, at times, battle between two natures and our Spirit is willing while flesh remains weak, this has been one of those weeks for me.
I have been known, in times past, to rant and rave and rail about things that, when viewed in the larger scheme of things, really didn’t matter. I have been known, in fact, to rather enjoy puffing up my chest to arrogantly and self-righteously expound upon the relative ridiculousness of the world.
I’ve often done this over ludicrous topics.
A dear friend once made the observation, “Save it for something that matters, will ya?“
He had a point.
And so I did.
When To Say What
I have this tendency, on the one hand, to believe in speaking out and speaking up. When people don’t, things like Rwanda happen. When good men do nothing and all, you know.
I have this tendency, on the other hand, to believe that a notion such as fighting for peace is laughable. You don’t fight fire with fire.
I dig people like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela personally. I think they’re made of much stronger stuff than I.
But something happened this week. And it got in my head and I went straight for old behaviors like telling the entire world off. I did this, of course, in my head where it did no one any good at all, least of all me.
And actually, something happened the week before. So maybe this just added fuel to the fire that was already burning.
I promised myself that I would not enter into the political arena on this site, because it negates the spirit and the purpose of it.
Then again, if this is to be a safe space for people to explore their faith, and sometimes by questioning, deepen it, then maybe this is the place.
I’m still not sure.
I am pretty sure, though, that if two topics you’re never supposed to discuss to be friendly, successful, or safe….are religion and politics, I may be up next for being burned at the stake.
I guess I’ve gotten okay with that.
And then there’s this.
I’ve grown older — and tired.
Shouting at the wind eventually wears one out.
It Happened One Night
One night, I happened to notice a tweet. A popular megachurch pastor was responding to an article posted by a president of a theological seminary.
Throw in a priest or a rabbi and it could be the beginning of a joke, but it’s not.
The popular pastor didn’t like the title of the article. The seminary president got snarky.
The article started a bit of a stir about yet another megachurch pastors use of homosexuality in a sermon illustration, and his handling of the homosexuality to begin with.
I bit my tongue.
It was not, however, lost on me that not just a few tweets later the same seminary president tweeted a newspaper article on declining membership in the traditional larger churches.
In my own sometimes snarky way, it was all I could do not to ask, “Do you think these two things might be related? Maybe?“
And then it really happened. And the debate began. And the news channels squealed with glee about all the ratings they could garner because something was brewing and they could stir the pot.
I bit my tongue.
The Next Generation
Rachel Held Evans, an intellectual and a Christian who also happens to be a great writer, wrote about how her generation is tired of the culture wars. She wrote that most have friends who are gay or lesbian and they largely blame the Church (the Church ‘universal’ with the capital C) for bullying, and so on. It’s a great piece. I’ll not do it near enough justice quoting or trying to encapsulate what she wrote here. It’s worth reading yourself.
My response to Rachel was, well, sad. It was to say, “It’s been this way a long long time. There’s always an ‘issue-of-the-decade’ everyone gets riled up about.” So I don’t hold out much hope it will change.
Oh. Not that I think the world won’t change. It will. Social change happens.
And it happens slowly, in increments, over time.
I just don’t think that those who thrive on fighting the culture wars will stop anytime soon.
So….then someone asked me why I use the term I ripped off from Anne Lamott,’Jesus-y’, on my About page, rather than Christian. And someone else, who hasn’t known me long, mentioned being surprised that I have the views that I do and am a Christian.
And so it all came together.
Liking Christ, Not Christians
Andy Stanley has done a whole series on Christianity, beginning with talking about why Christianity might need rebranding. I like what he had to say.
I, personally, don’t like the label. I don’t use it because I don’t like it.
I don’t use ‘Christ-follower’ or ‘Jesus-follower’ because I’m not emergent. Or at least, not in the ways I’ve seen some.
I’m not ashamed, in the least, to say I believe in and follow Jesus (or try to).
But I don’t like using the label (only used 3 times in the Bible, by the way, much less than the term ‘disciple’ was used but I digress……) because I don’t like being automatically lumped together with the groups who speak loudest, who also strangely seem to get the media coverage, and are seemingly hell-bent on self-righteously, judgmentally, hypocritically, and all the other all-too-accurate terms people think of when they think of Christians, get up in arms about the issue-of-the-decade and generally act like people with a PhD in Pharisee.
But let’s face it. As a note to all my non-Christian friends: Lumping Christians all together in large sweeping generalizations is, well, just as offensive as when Christians do it to others.
So…no. We aren’t all the same.
Not all of us are against homosexuals or gay-marriage. Some of us are for women’s rights. Some of us, way back in the day, even managed somehow to get on the right side of segregation.
Many of us believe you can’t legislate morality. Nor should one try.
Then again, maybe we’re not the majority of ‘us.’ I’m not so sure. Maybe we’re just the silent ones.
What If We Try Not To Change The World
As Rachel mentioned about her generation, many in mine feel the same about the treatment of homosexuals, as we’ve had those same friends for decades now. And we’ve watched the same thing the younger generation has, for a longer period of time. In fact, we had the particular pleasure of going through a time when some called AIDS God’s punishment on the wicked. Which was deplorable and stomach-churning, to put it in the most polite of terms.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” - Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
No. I don’t think we’re meant to legislate morality.
And no. I most definitely don’t think that behaving in self-righteous, arrogant, and hateful ways degrading, humiliating, and treating entire groups of people as though they are somehow sub-human or less than in any way is at all reflective of Jesus — or anything I see in scripture.
If we want to change the world, perhaps we should note that the attempts to do so through gaining power and political maneuvering hasn’t worked all that well in the past.
And in behaving in the ways we preach against on Sundays while attempting a hostile takeover of culture, have lost not only those we might influence, but those sitting right down the pew from us as well.
Many in my generation felt the same way Rachel talked about in her piece decades ago.
And we left.
Maybe there’s a better way.
Maybe, if we want to affect change in the world, it would do us well to take a step back and ask ourselves why our churches aren’t major places of healing — or why transformation into ‘Christlike character’ we so like to talk about largely doesn’t happen there.
Maybe, if our hearts did transform.
Maybe if we exhibited all these things together, as a community, rather than keeping ourselves busy taking splinters out of the world’s eye…..maybe they’d see something in us. Maybe they’d see a peace in us. Maybe they’d see love in action in us. Maybe they’d see something worth putting down the remote, or the weapons, for.
Maybe trying humility and service, rather than trying to force and coerce others, we’d see change like nothing that’s ever been seen before.
Maybe if we maintain a faithful presence within culture, like Israel in Babylon, we would get somewhere. We don’t have to attack it, withdraw from it, or assimilate it. We can live within it, and remain faithful.
Maybe it’s time we take care of cleaning up our own side of the street.
Maybe if we stopped trying to make other people act like Christians, if we ourselves stopped acting like Christians and started being Christians, and if we left God’s work of changing the world up to God, the world might change in awesome ways we don’t expect.
Maybe…..if we led with grace, we might get somewhere.
After all, Jesus did.
P.S. ETA: Actually, if you notice my ‘Be the Change’ video and know a part of my mission and purpose, on second thought….this really is in line with what’s goin’ on here 
In our society, we’ve been living beyond our means.
We’re living beyond our means financially, emotionally, and physically.
The National Sleep Foundation’s research confirmed that adults need an average of 7-9 hours of sleep a night.
During sleep, restorative and repair work happens throughout our body, including tissue growth and repair.
There’s are great points for taking naps too:
-Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.
-Thomas Edison was a well-known daily napper.
-Eleanor Roosevelt took naps before speaking engagements.
-Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was non-negotiable. His take? He said it helped him get twice as much done each day.
That’s not bad company to be in.
We’re given a great many gifts in this life, including our bodies. We’re to take great care of what we’ve been given. And we’ve all experienced what we’re like, how we feel, how depleted our energy and focus is, and even how we tend to treat others when we’re sleep deprived.
When we’re sleep deprived, we definitely have a tendency to have no energy or focus for God, for staying in presence.
So yeah. Rest is a spiritual practice. More on this in today’s video:
You now have permission….go take a nap.
