Delusions of Grandeur or the Heat Mirage of Hope

I am in a new season of life, not only have I relocated my family half way across the country, I have also started a MFA program, and simultaneously been granted the opportunity to serve as a ministry leader in my church. With the class, work load, and rehearsal schedule all bringing themselves to bare in my life I find myself trying to obtain and execute what are the fundamental functions of Husband, Student, Teacher, Minister, and Manager. To be honest with you, these are not the most difficult aspects of this season. I think so far, the singular spur that has kept me awake at night is an unquenchable new appetite, it's this insatiable desire to build Kingdoms.

Even as I write the words "build Kingdoms" I think I should probably shape that so that it is more suitable to a conservative audience, but I believe this best describes what I feel. In each area of my life, when I look down the road two, five, ten years I have begun to see powerful institutions. Organizations that are really changing, challenging, and effecting their constituents and communities for Christ Jesus. Schools, Churches, Orphanages, Ministries  all of these working for the one Kingdom and in communion establishing that same kingdom, but in and of themselves they are like kingdoms. This part of my heart does not cease to move, nor does it rest, the workings of communication systems, electrical wiring, financial management, discipleship, product replication, recruitment and expansion populate a majority of my thoughts and often escort me to sleep.

What might be as wearing on me as the sleeplessness, is the present. Looking at where I currently stand and then glancing off in to the distance and seeing where its all going, or where It could go, and know that between here and there is more than I can see, more than I am currently equipped for, and more than I know. My hope is that what I am looking to is not a delusion, but an actual goal, a vision of what is to come. That it is what it appears to be and not an object being manipulated by the heat coming from the expanse that connects me to it.

What are your hopes for the environments and ministries the Lord has given  you to labor in? Where does your vision find its genesis? Do you struggle with the seemingly insurmountable distance of your goals? Are you currently running the Kingdom you saw from afar? How was the trip, and how did you get there? Or have you built a hutch along the path and stopped all together?