Living into God's Future--What does it mean?

Trinity, Lynnwood and Pointe of Grace are in an intentional phase of seeking God's guidance in planning for future ministry.

One reason it is important to pay attention to God's dream for the future is that our present action is shaped by the future we expect.  The recent earthquake in Japan illustrates this.  Because that country lived with the expectation that earthquakes would be part of their future their current actions had prepared them so that damage was less than it might have been otherwise.  Even though we in the Pacific Northwest have been warned about potential future earthquakes, relatively few of us prepare for "the big one" that has been predicted.  In part, this may be due to the normal human behavior of assuming that our future will be something similar to our past experience.  So our present actions, based on past experience, actually re-create  the past, continuing our relative lack of preparedness. 

If we believe that God has an intention for the world that different from our current experience, then we must look out into that future and make God's vision our own, here and now, so that we do not simply recreate an (hopefully) improved version of the past but take actual steps toward creating the new future that is God's intention.  The graphic represents the impact of bringing both our past experience and wisdom and an inspired vision of the past into our present.  This generates progress toward a new future. 

Ministry area groups spent some time imagining God's dream for the future in order to inspire their work.

You may click here to access a guide for your own prayerful reflection on God's intention for our world.  Or you may click here to get a simple tool to start conversation with your children about God's dream for the world.

If you use these tools, we'd welcome you to share some of what you imagine you would see and hear in a world where God's dream for the world was made visible. 

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