Prophesying, seeing visions, dreaming dreams

This past Saturday's Upper Room Daily Reflection:

PEACEMAKERS ARE THOSE who see that the world and its people are broken but also hold a dream, a vision, that God can and does reach out to heal our world. And God does it through the acts of those who live by the values of this new kingdom where God’s will is being done.
- Mary Lou Redding, The Power of a Focused Heart

Today’s Scripture Reading
“In the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”
- Acts 2:17, NIV


During our spiritual formation seminar this past Friday, before we walked a labyrinth at a church in Dupont Circle, we read the lectionary readings for this Sunday, which included this passage from Acts. I came across this passage when Katie and I were first looking at inspiration for bumper stickers in February-ish - and then it came back to me in the lectionary readings, and now again in Saturday's Upper Room. I think this is one of my new favorite scriptures - I want to prophesy, to see visions, to dream dreams - I think these things are essential to feeding our souls, to bringing into reality a new kingdom (whatever that means) - we must create, and re-create, envision, and re-envision, as time passes, things change, as history haunts us and blesses us, as new history enfolds, new light is shed upon the past, new revelations are discovered for the way the future could be, as we are present to this very moment. It's all in process - the past, the present, the future - and we have to continually find ways to touch every part of it that we can.

I hope to eventually piece together all these little thoughts, anecdotes, quotes, ideas, questions, and meddlings that I've been throwing around - on ideas of brokenness, sin, new kingdom, etc. But in the meantime, this is what you get.

Kiss and make up

This week's "On Faith" question from the Washington Post is the following:

In light of recent high-profile public apologies by Don Imus, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Nifong, the Pope and others, what is the relationship of apology (repentance) to forgiveness?

You can view the question and panelists' responses here.


I think this is especially pertinent, in light of our intern retreat this past weekend, which involved asking for and receiving of forgiveness as a part of a reconciliation service. People may or may not find that lens a helpful one to speak to the "On Faith" question. I also think our previous discussions about sin would also be interesting to bring into this - though they may take us barreling in another direction.