A Sign of Contradiction (John 15:19)
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Around this time of year, my social media feed fills up with people holding vision board parties, where people are encouraged to cut out pictures of things that represent their dreams and attach them to poster board. Then, they’re told to meditate on these visions to make them manifest.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish,” – Proverbs 29:18.
There’s nothing wrong with desiring things. Psalms 37:4-5 goes so far as to promise us, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
God gave us the capacity to dream of impossible things that we become motivated to strive toward accomplishing them. “For with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26
It is good to dream. It is good to “write the vision and make it plain,” as the prophet Habukuk tells is in chapter 2 verse 2.
So what’s wrong with a vision board? Three things.
First, our vision sets expectations for what the Lord will deliver to us that don’t come from Him. If He then delivers something that doesn’t match our vision, we may not recognize it as an answer to our prayers.
Second, those false expectations we’re setting for how He’s going to show up in our lives can then lead to disappointment and cause us to doubt His love for us. Our minds may question, “Doesn’t He care about what we want?”
Third, our visions are based on our own limited experience and understanding. What if the best thing we can envision for ourselves is a pale comparison to what God has in mind for us?
As St. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 2:9 ““Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
We can still have fun with vision parties, encouraging one another as Matthew 7:7-8 says to believe that we can “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find.”
However, I recommend that we keep to words as the Prophet Habukuk and my friend, I Ain’t Me No More does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds9qClvNWLw&pp=ygUeSSBhaW50IG1lIG5vIG1vcmUgdmlzaW9uIGJvYXJk
Words leave the door open for God to decide how to fulfill that vision.
I also recommend we go one step further: Create a Surrender Tree.
The process starts with an empty cardboard 12-pack soda container. The brand doesn’t matter. If you don’t have one, go knock on your neighbor’s door and ask them if they have one. It’ll open the door to a conversation and prevent garbage from entering a landfill. Win-win for everyone, right?
Here are the steps.
1. Cut a panel out of the 12-pack. You should get two long panels and two shorter panels.
2. Use a short panel with a long panel to make a cross.
3. Tape the cross to the wall somewhere in your home where everyone can see it and where you’ll be seeing it frequently.
4. On that cross, write scriptures that remind you to surrender everything to Him. Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; on your own intelligence do not rely” would be a good one, as would 1 Peter 5:7 “casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.”
5. Trace a leaf shape large enough for you to write your visions on it on a piece of the cardboard. Cut it out.
6. Use that leaf as a template for cutting out as many leaves as you can from the remaining cardboard.
7. Sacrifice any scrap cardboard you have in your home to make more leaves.
8. Write one vision per leaf and date you wrote that down.
9. Feel free to include any worries, concerns, or anxieties that are troubling your mind and heart.
10. Secure the edges of the cross with tape so that when you stick your leaves to them, they can be peeled off later.
11. Tape the leaves to the edges of the cross as you pray, “Jesus, I trust in you and I surrender this vision (worry, concern, or anxiety) to you.”
12. Anytime that vision, worry, concern, or anxiety comes to mind, go to the Cross of Surrender and pray again, “Jesus, I trust in you and I surrender this to you.”
13. As God moves in your life to fulfill the desire of your heart, remove the source of your worry, anxiety, or concern, or moves your heart in another direction, remove that leaf from your Tree of Surrender.
You can use an empty 12-pack soda package just like you did to create the tree of surrender, but this one you want to be more tree like. You want to give it branches and roots.
1. Take that brown cardboard leaf that you plucked from the Tree of Surrender and cover its backside in green construction paper or green paint.
2. Write on that leaf the date the prayer was answered and how it was answered.
3. Tape it to the Tree of Life.
This becomes your artistic record of all the prayers that God answers for you over the coming years. You’ll build on it day after day, week after week, year after year. When you find yourself discouraged by a set back or feeling forgotten and lonely, go visit that Tree of Life and remind yourself of all the ways and all the times that God showed up in your life.
Both the Surrender Tree and the Tree of Life open the door to conversations about God with Guests and Visitors. Be sure they are both in a prominent area of your home so that anyone who enters it can see them.
Your Surrender Tree becomes a quiet testimony to your faith and trust in God, and an invitation to prayer. When someone asks you about it, you can ask them if they'd like to surrender anything to the Lord. Then, help them create their own leaf and tape it to your tree. You can then be reminded to pray for them whenever you see that leaf.
Your Tree of Life becomes a quiet witness to all the work that God’s done in you and through you, and a sign of hope that miracles are still possible in our jaded age.
Award-winning international speaker and author, Brandy M. Miller is a Catholic revert. Raised in a culturally Catholic home, she left the faith at 16 in search of the truth and returned 12 years later when she found it right where she left it. Today, she is convinced that the Catholic Church is the cure to society's ills and is eager to help share the Gospel truth to those who have ears to hear it. When she isn't writing for or about the Catholic Church, she offers her writing talents to Catholics who would like help sharing their witnesses of Christ's work in their lives.
