Vision is quite simply about seeing.

In religious terms it means seeing the world as God’s world. It means refusing to conform to the world’s standards and values, or to go along with that cynical pessimism which some call realism but is in fact a terrible, destructive despair. To believe in God is to believe that there is a power for good in the world, a power that makes itself known in the deepest and most creative drives and forces in people and in nature; a power that in the last analysis is irresistible.

To believe in God is to believe that in the end goodness will triumph over evil, justice over injustice, peace over war, that love will prove more powerful than violence, and that the compassionate service of others will prove more lasting than the gratification of oneself.

Vision in these terms is seen by the New Testament to mean a profound and revolutionary change in our understanding and in what we believe to be possible: a change in how we perceive the world, our neighbours and ourselves.

It is as profound and as dramatic as the recovery of sight to one bom blind, or the rebirth of one who is as good as dead. It has to do with faith and with hope; and it is at once utterly realistic and enormously costly.

It is, in a word, what Jesus means by the Kingdom of God; and it is the vision for which he lived and died.