The vision is Jesus - obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus. The vision is an army of young people. You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism. They laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crust on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice. They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and the dirty and the dying.
What is the Vision? The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure. Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation. It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay its life for the cause. A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great, "Well Done, faithful sons and daughters." Such heroes are as radical on Monday mornings as Sunday night. They don't need frames from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again, "Come on!"
And the army is disciplined. Young people who beat their bodies into submission. Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them? And the generation PRAYS like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfurous tears and with great barrow loads of laughter! Whatever it takes, they will give.
Breaking the rules. Shaking the mediocrity from its cozy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrings, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries. They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside. On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like a costume to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or popularity? They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. An electric chair for a throne. With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, They pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them. Their DNA chooses Jesus. He breathes out, they breathe in. Their subconscious sings. They've had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centers. Don't you hear them coming? Herald the weirdos! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here comes the frightened and forgotten with the fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon thehounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be:It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon. How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is His today. My distant hope is His 3D. And my feeble whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking "Amen!" from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ Himself. And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
-Pete Craig
