Dream Awakener

  craig in action 
  Originally uploaded by Kris Kros.

John the seer writes in Revelation 7:16 about the day when there are no longer any people who live with hunger, or who thirst for something to drink.  Think about what that would look like – the elimination of hunger.  No more pictures of little children with swollen bellies, no scarcity.  No mothers trying to scrounge around for enough food so that her baby could survive another day.

But it’s not just the end of poverty.  The prophets and seers of God’s future write about the overflow of abundance that would occur.   Amos says, “The days are coming, when the one who plows will overtake the one who reaps; when new wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills.”

The prophets would always paint poetic pictures of what God’s future will look like, and Amos uses imagery here to talk about what the earth will look like when it is redeemed from the curse.  It will be a place of abundance, not scarcity – God’s abundance. 

John Ortberg writes, “In our terms we’d say something like, ’Every day the stock market will end a little higher than the day before.  The bull will dwell on Wall Street forever; the bear will visit it no more.  Alan Greenspan will never have to raise interest rates again.  Little children in the Sudan will have carpeted bedrooms and private baths and their own automated teller machines in their own bedrooms.  The jobless rate will go down to zero and stay there, and everybody will love what they do.’

THIS MEANS…
If the life of the coming age is the elimination of hunger and thirst and in its place abundance, how are our economic practices at this moment anticipating the reality of abundance and the elimination of hunger and thirst?

When the Spirit of God came upon the early church, God moved in them in such a way that those who had a lot of resources helped out others who didn’t have much; the mission of the early church was shaped by their understanding of God’s future.  Paul had a concern for the poor because he understood and hoped for God’s future.

Genesis and I recently co-founded the Solis Foundation where we raise money to give micro-grants, micro-loans and community grants to people in Kenya.  We are doing this in partnership with Village Enterprise Fund.  By God’s grace and leading, we are living by faith in the present by our actions, with the anticipation of the reality of God’s abundance and the elimination of hunger and thirst.

It looks like this year; we may very well be able to fund the start of ten new businesses in Moisbridge and twenty new businesses in Lodwar.  And while some people may say:  “Why are you doing that?  Surely you don’t think you are going to change the world do you?”  But acts like these are a sign to the coming kingdom; acts like these are a foretaste of the kingdom.  Acts like these embody signals of what God is about in the world.  This is what I mean when I say a future-shaped mission.