Small Things and Vision

“It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.” Mother Theresa

God has been using the readings for my Missional Leadership class to challenge an assumption I had made about myself. The assumption was that I was not a visionary because I didn’t have huge lofty goals that I aspired to, but was focused on building relationships. What I didn’t realize because of my assumption, was that my vision is for better relationships, and isn’t program focused.

The underlying assumption is one that’s about the nature of vision and what vision can and cannot encompass. I see that my assumption was that vision had to be about large scale actions, and not about the little things. I think that I have primarily heard about vision in the macro context, and had never put it together mentally that vision could be about something on an interpersonal level rather than an organizational level.

Micro-visions, sometimes I wonder at God’s patience with me. It has taken me this long to grasp that meaning from the parable of the mustard seed. As I sit in the light of the Spirit, I am being challenged to let go of my assumption that visions can only be large scale.

The Spirit has used Friedman’s book "A Failure of Nerve" to challenge that assumption, and even in some ways has shown me that the vision to improve interpersonal relationships will foster others’ visions and even prove to have larger effects than is readily apparent.

My worldview has been shifted a bit, and I need a lot more processing to figure out all of the ramifications, but one thing I know is that I must now process this vision, and figure out how to articulate it.