31 Days of Trusting Grace - Day 15 - Visionary

She's got it written up there on one of those giant post-it pads.  All of our names under the title "strengths."  Then we start popcorning it out, all the strengths we see in each other.  They come around to me.  People say things.  We laugh.  I squirm in my seat.  But one thing someone says stands out to me: "She's a visionary."  Hmm... a visionary?  There's something weighty about that word to me.  And something incredibly empowering and affirming.  I like it.  So I look it up.

vi·sion·ar·y

ˈviZHəˌnerē/

adjective

1. 1.

   (especially of a person) thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom.

   "a visionary leader"

   synonyms:

   inspired, imaginative, creative, inventive, ingenious, enterprising,innovative; noun

   1. 1.

      a person with original ideas about what the future will or could be like.
   2. 
      

Imagination.  Wisdom.  Inspired.  Creative.  Will or could be like.  

I roll the words around in my head.  Yeah.  I'd like to be that.  And as Christ-followers, as people who have been given eternal life, as the Hope people, as the chosen Bride, we should be visionaries.  We should be inspired.  We should never be the ones bogged down by the here and now.  We should be the ones looking up and imagining what this world could be like... what this world will be like.

Because there is a day coming when all brokenness will be made whole.  There is a day coming when the relationships we've lost will be restored.  There is a day coming when the world and the universe will cease its groaning and all will be made right.  That's why we have the cross.  That's why we have the empty grave.  Because this is not the end.  There is a future.

Jesus was a visionary.  He looked at a ragged band of, well let's face it, fools and saw world-changers.  He looked at a torture device and saw redemption.  He looked at death and saw eternal life.  He looks at me and He sees a woman "clothed with strength and dignity," a beloved child.  Jesus was an expert at seeing things not as they are, but as they could be, as they will be one day.  

What if we all ran to Jesus and asked Him to teach us to see the same way?  What if we asked Him to make us a body of visionaries?  Oh, we could take the world by storm!  What joy we would experience if we looked at the world, at the people around us, and saw what will be, instead of what is!  I want that.  I want to be a visionary.