A clear sense of vision and mission . . .

Do you have a clear sense of vision and mission during this season of your life? Whether you are planning for a career (or another career), struggling to manage competing obligations, running in several directions at once as you try to balance and integrate family, work, friends, health, and faith, or if you are beginning to think more intentionally about the legacy you will leave behind and the larger significance of your life, do you have a clear sense of vision and mission?

Jesus had a vision and mission that preoccupied him. His vision was of the ultimate reality of God’s love, and the eternal reign of love in every realm of life. It is the reality he spoke of when he announced “the kingdom of God.” The Greek word basileia is arguably better translated as “reign.” So, again, the kingdom of God is manifested when God’s ways reign and are operative in every realm. And yet, even reign does not fully grasp what Jesus had in mind.

Because we are created in God’s image, we are in fact related by a common creator. Another way of speaking of the kingdom of God, then, is to describe the reality that is manifested when we recognize the “kin-dom” of all God’s children. Having grasped God’s vision for the world — the kin-dom of all of creation — we then get to work in the fulfillment of our unique but inseparable mission to work for the kin-dom’s manifestation on earth as it is in heaven, a world in which everyone is treated with infinite value and dignity.

During this season of your life, what is your mission and how will you fulfill the vision of the kin-dom of God on earth as it is in heaven in your family, in the places you frequent, in your community of faith, and in the obvious and not-so-obvious ways that your life intersects with people all over the world?

How will you co-operate with God and others in the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?