The Vision

If you haven't seen the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron I highly recommend it, if only for the purpose of hearing the music, which is orchestrated by Hans Zimmer (who is one of the best contemporary composers out there) and sung by Bryan Adams (who's one of my favorite singers). There's this one song, that seems to hit home with me. Here are the lyrics:
Sound the bugle now - play it just for me
As the seasons change - remember how I used to be
Now I can't go on - I can't even start
I've got nothing left - just an empty heart

I'm a soldier - wounded so I must give up the fight
There's nothing more for me - lead me away...
Or leave me lying here

Sound the bugle now - tell them I don't care
There's not a road I know - that leads to anywhere
Without a light feat that I will - stumble in the dark
Lay right down - decide not to go on

Then from on high - somewhere in the distance
There's a Voice that calls - remember who you are
If you lose yourself - your courage soon will follow
So be strong tonight - remember who you are
You're a soldier now - fighting in a battle
To be free once more -That's worth fighting for.

My boss has the following posted in her house. It was so moving, that I thought I'd put it here. It's related to the above.

"So this guy comes up to me and says "What's the vision? What's the big idea?"

I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision? The vision is JESUS -- obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus. The vision is an army of young people. You see bones ? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism. They laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice. They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. They are free yet they are slaves to the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure. Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation. It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers
choose to loose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays
like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive
inside.
On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know?
Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself - the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
And that, my friend, is Guaranteed."