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Vision

 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. (Luke 9:23-24)

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

The reading for class on Sunday takes me back to something I read last fall, but I knew I’d be coming back to it. It has to do with how we go about actively becoming like Jesus. That’s supposed to be the goal, after all. And as noted yesterday, that means putting to death the self that stands in opposition. Jesus puts it bluntly for us in the first passage above. If we would be His disciple, we have to 1) deny ourselves, 2) take up our crosses daily, and 3) follow Him.

The first key to doing this, according to Dallas Willard, is vision: an idea or picture of what being like Jesus would involve. Hebrews 12:2 suggests that we need a joy set before us. I’ve been praying about vision for at least a month, but it has tended to be more of a corporate vision. I’ve asked for a vision of where God wants the Christians in my neighborhood to head (and me, within that.) I’ve asked for wisdom, direction, and attitude for years. But when it comes to a vision of the joy set before me if I die to “Not Good Enough,” I’m stuck. What would it look like for me to live by grace?

Three basic pictures come to mind but they’re not the pictures I was looking for. They are pictures I’ve either used before or are variations on them. The first is a picture that I use in my Sunday Day of Rest picture: the hand of a relay racer passing the baton to his partner. This makes perfect sense, because Not Good Enough requires that I keep running until I can’t run, then walking until I can’t walk, then crawling until I can’t crawl and collapse.

The second picture is that of two hands grasping around the wrist of the other – the “I’ve got you,” rescue sort of grasp. The problem with both these pictures is that they are "sometimes" pictures. “I’m OK…I can run…I can walk…I can crawl…Uh, Jesus, care to take the baton now?” Or “Help! I’m drowning…or falling…” They’re both good pictures of part of what grace sometimes does.

But the third picture, which didn’t come to mind until I was writing this post, is the picture of two hands clasped for a waltz. It’s not the first time I’ve used the image of dancing in connection with my relationship with Jesus, but over time, the image slipped away. I wonder if I can find a cross stitch pattern… Or a panel of material…

The other idea that comes to mind is to listen to "Be Thou My Vision" about ten thousand times in the next month.

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