It’s easy to imagine a peaceful, ideal future, as illustrated in the cartoon. Somehow the dove outweighs the tank. Peace defeats violence. But how do we get from the conflicted present to the idyllic future?
Each country, each politician, each of us in our own personal worlds assumes it is our job to bring our desired future into reality, or at least to prevent anyone from forcing an undesirable future on us. Because none of us knows how the future will actually turn out, we get anxious. We try to increase our own power so we have a better chance to reach our desired future by the path that looks most likely to lead there, but it is so hard to get into position when we don’t know what we are getting into position for!
Dream with me a little bit. Suppose there is a good man who honestly has everyone’s welfare in mind, not just his own. Suppose this good man actually knows the future in detail and has a strategy to bring it about. When that man tries to recruit us for his team of future-bringers, will we sign up?
Certainly we would first want to know a little more about what we would be getting into. Suppose that as part of his recruitment talk, this man told us to think about the future differently. Instead of seeking a path from the present to the future, we are to imagine rays of the future coming into us--magical rays that change the people they hit.
Like Midas’s golden touch, these future-rays gradually turn us people of the present into people of the future. Then others can see what the real future will look like, and they will be attracted to this recruiter too.
These future-rays change us before our circumstances change, not because perfect circumstances have arrived. We light up as the light—the mysterious power of the future--hits us deep inside.
This does not mean we get a glimpse of the future, get inspired, and try harder to be better people. In fact, the recruiter does not explain exactly how this “glow” from the future impacts our desires and personalities. He just says to trust him for it and consciously open up to it.
However it works, we know one thing for sure—it makes us part of Jesus, the “Christ” or “Messiah”, who knows the future and brings it. Jesus is recruiting people to open up and let his future dawn on them. This is what SYNC is about, “See Yourself iN Christ”.
Of course, we all have a dark side that does not want to welcome the light. It isn’t easy to let that darkness go, but the internal dawn of the utopian future is so attractive that we finally do let our darkness go. As the light of the future shines into us, the darkness can’t cope. That's how we become people of the future.
Some scoffers say that all talk of Jesus is out of date. They are clueless about Jesus the Messiah, the one living person who knows and brings the future. He does what other wannabe world-changers only dream of doing. Jesus creates people of the future, and you can be one of them. Maybe you already are.
Christmas, celebrated with one eye on the future, and New Year’s Eve, looking ahead to the New Year, are great times to move forward in your own discovery process. The SYNC Tool Kit for Vision Season will help you discover more of what it means to be a person of the future, a person “in Christ”—authentically merry, authentically happy.
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