[some thoughts from the message last weekend]

I recently read a list written by a grade 8 student about the 30 things she hoped to do before age 30. With just over 3 months left before I turn 30 I was particularly intrigued to see what she hoped to accomplish. The list was as expansive and unpractical as you might imagine a 16 year olds lost might be. Hopefully by age 30 she will have accomplished more of her list than I have of my hypothetically 14 year old list.

Of course our plans at age 16 may not well reflect the future and all of these incredible and varied things that we wanted to do with our lives have probably (or will probably if you are not yet 30) passed away because slowly over time that list became filtered by what was feasible and practical.

You may have once wondered what you would do with your life and if you asked someone older and wiser for advice they almost, guaranteed, steered you towards the most reasonable options, more than that the most economically viable options.

No don’t study music, you’ll never make a living as a musician.
Dance are you kidding me, who’s going to pay you to dance.
Theology – are you crazy, of what possibly use could that be?

And over time brilliant, creative, intelligent people have come to believe themselves less than that. And even those of us who have won the game, the University professors, successful business women, lawyers and accountants and even the rocket scientists of the world have lost some of the our childhood ability to dream and imagine. Somewhere over the course of however many days and weeks and months and years it took for you and I to grow up, we moved from the broad list of things we imagined we could do with our lives and settled for a series of meetings.

There was a time though when all of us experienced much more of life, when we imagined unpractical and fantastical prospects for our future; before things became too complicated for our own good.

Maybe this is what Jesus was talking about when he said that his kingdom was best accessible to children. Perhaps this is part of what he meant, that they have some distinct advantage over those of us who have grown up a bit too much and complicated things a bit too far. Maybe sometimes we need to be drawn back to the simplest ideas so that we can dream big things again.

See at some point we trained ourselves to believe that the future would (and could) only contain a greater measure of today. Somewhere our history and our experience became a barrier to our future possibilities because all of our knowledge and experience about the world has convinced us that our contribution is limited in scope and range and affect

Don’t let your dreams get the best of you because the world is too big;
Too populous
Too damaged
Too far gone
Too evil
Too – insert your excuse here
Just too much for your story to impact

So forget changing the world, forget changing your particular slice of reality, forget the idea of even really changing yourself, the best you can do, is hope for a little more of what you already have.

More money, more status, a better job, a bigger house, a better family.

We’ve lost some of our ability to imagine that tomorrow could really be different than today and if there is anyone on earth who should be able to imagine a different tomorrow, it should be us who believe in an incredible yesterday.

Jesus said clearly that this incredible, world changing, kingdom, process that started with his entrance into history now rests with you and I. Directly he said that, “ the kingdom of God isn’t found through careful observation, and you can’t say, ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is’ because the kingdom of God is inside you.” [Luke 17:20-21] He said our choices, our lives- are now the tangible reality of this kingdom of God. What we choose is part of larger culture that will change everything.

The question is do we still somewhere inside of us have the ability to imagine audacious things, to believe that the next moment could be completely different from the one that preceded it and that regardless of our past determinations of success or failure; our next choice, our next encounter, our next relationship could be the seed of a completely new expression of the kingdom of God.