When someone asks about your roots, where do you go? Do you tell them where you grew up? Do you mention your ancestry? Do you tell them where “your people” are from?
You may not be going back far enough.
Before your ancestors hitched a wagon, boarded a boat, or walked across the miles to find a new home, your journey began.
Before you ever had a thought, you came to life in the imagination of God.
Before you breathed your first breath, you were an ember first fanned to life by the very Breath that spoke all the things into existence.
And He does not just see that handful of years you can remember or your family has recorded. He sees them all. He dreams of a future with you! And He’s given you a part in making it.
What will you make?
How will you shape tomorrow?
Will you love new people who have never known the kind of love that comes from the heart of God through His people? Will you plant new churches that will serve as bastions of hope and life in a desperate world? WIll you start new ministries to equip and serve people that have long ago written off the church as a place clinging to the past with no future to speak of?
Please don’t settle for building a future that’s only based on your past. Lean so far back into the roots planted in God’s future that you find yourself playing in His imagination once again, where anything is possible. This may all sound a little hokie and weird to some of you (Ok, to many of you… I know my mind doesn’t do ‘normal’ very well…), but could we stop rolling through the motions of our memories and advance fearlessly and intently into a new day? A day that is better than this day? Could we stop working out of a sense of obligation, and work to build something, to renew and reconcile what has been broken and tarnished in this world by sin?
Could we dream new, Kingdom dreams?
Then may we live fully to bring them to life!