Last night during Youth Service I had an interesting thought drop in my heart. This happened during announcements, not during the preaching! I really did pay attention.
I know a lot of people choose One Little Word or a Word of the Year each year. I've only done that once before in 2015 when I chose "Reset." I like the concept, but don't always have a word that comes to me. But don't you think the year 2020 is a perfect year for the word Vision?
What will I do with this word? At this point it's little more than a concept. I do plan to study each case in the Bible when someone had a vision or when the word vision is used. The word vision is found 79 times in 73 verses. For today, I just wanted to get the idea written down.
Key verse will be Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." I found some very interesting commentary on this verse:
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible said this:
Where Divine revelation, and the faithful preaching of the sacred testimonies, are neither reverenced nor attended, the ruin of that land is at no great distance.
The Pulpit Commentary said this:
The revelation of ancient prophecy was not continuous and uninterrupted, but it came in flashes, between which there were intervals of darkness. Sometimes those intervals were long and most distressing to a people that had learnt to draw its chief lessons from Divine oracles. Such a time was experienced in the days of Eli, for "the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no open vision" (1 Samuel 3:1); and another and longer period was that of the "four centuries of silence" between the closing of the Old Testament and the opening of the New Testament.
A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown broke it down like this:
no vision — instruction in God’s truth, which was by prophets, through visions (see 1 Samuel 3:1).
people perish — are deprived of moral restraints.
As an election year, I feel sure that 2020 will have its share of challenges and drama. Instruction in God's truth, not what the media or politicians want to sell, is what we need to see clearly.
Do you choose a word for your year? Have you chosen one yet?
