City of Crushed Vision

A city with the power to deflate dreams. A terrifying thought. Each day spent dwindles into monotony. Passion lost amid the fatal mundane. Quenching the very hope and life to which we should so frantically cling. Our grip loosens, teased away by alluring forces we cannot recognise. Blind to the face of resignation, we follow him freely. Led into acceptance of a lesser existence. Racing heartbeats slow to the steady doomfilled march. Eyes cast down. Hearts contained. And we do not realise it, but vision has been tamed. Dreams with potential to change the world, reduced to the ordinary. The attainable. The realistic. How did it come to this? How can we have been so unseeing. So fast asleep in our own minds not to have noticed the subtle departure of meaning and purpose from this life.

Let me remind you.

You live for something. For something far greater than yourself. You have been redeemed from death by love. By a love which conquors death and renders the powerful powerless. The love which onced caused your feeble heart to dream and become alive. You have the vision within you to change the world. Radical passion with the strength to endure all the hardships of this life, and conquor.

I know something of struggle. Of the utter devastation life can bring. Insufferable pain. To watch a teenage girl unable to lead a normal life. To feel the effects of a family broken in two. To wonder why you can't remember what it feels like to be really happy. To reach the depths of emotion never even conceived of and catch no glimpse of the end of the tunnel. I am tired of being strong. I am strong. But I am tired of being it always.

But this I know. The hope we have is not in this life. Build your hopes here and watch them crumble into nothingness, dusty remnants of good times turned to bad.
But there is hope in Jesus. In the love more real than anything ever known on this earth, yet more ethereal than the highest thought the human mind can convieve of. His love is saving. His love is strong enough for me. Strong enough for you. And strong enough for all the troubles of this world. The more my heart aches, the more I cling to the joy I find in Jesus. Happiness is temporary. But joy endures. And love and joy together, will save this word. If only you and I step out to bring it.

Wake up. Shake off the dust, heaped high upon your shoulders. Do not let the place you find yourself in limit the scope of your dreams. Look beyond the horizon, to the distant unknown. This time and this place are but moments. You have an eternity to live for. Begin today.