“Start Practicing!” (My caption for this caricature drawing. Feel free to create your own).
Danger: Passion becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. Passion without vision is eternally purposeless. If passion is the fuel, vision is the destination.
A Stroke of Genesis
When William Booth said “No!” to Volunteer and “Yes!” to The Salvation Army, this was an inyesvative decision not lacking in passion and vision – seeing things as they were meant to be. In other words, striking out the word volunteer and replacing it with “Salvation” was a “stroke of Genesis.”
A July 31, 1907 editorial in the New York Times put it this way:
“The influence of William Booth throughout the English-speaking world is probably greater today than that of any other leader of men. It compels us to consider how dangerous that influence might be to the welfare of society, if it were possessed by a man who might combine with his courage and clearness of vision a controlling desire for self-aggrandizement and the capacity for self-deception that has distinguished so many popular leaders.”
The editorial goes on to say, “There are many others conducting a similar evangelical and spiritually uplifting work in smaller fields, but there is none his equal in the public vision.”
This is the New York Times speaking, mind you. The editorial phrase used to describe Booth’s vision was, “...to Christianize the multitude, to purify the public mind, and to improve the material welfare of the poor.”
Larger Ends
His vision in a word was “Salvation,” and by his definition, all-inclusive in scope – “The world for God.” Dare we not minimize the role Catherine played in this vision-casting thing, always nudging WB forward, “We are made for larger ends than Earth can encompass. Oh, let us be true to our exalted destiny.”
Vision: “the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be: prophetic vision; the vision of an entrepreneur” – Dictionary.com.
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible” – Jonathan Swift: “He who can see the invisible can do the impossible.”
Practice the Impossible
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass the White Queen is speaking to Alice:
“I can’t believe that,” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said, in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Coincidentally, Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. Looking Glass was its sequel written in 1871; this while The Salvation Army was still in its infancy. Not only were Carroll and Booth contemporaries; they were on the same wavelength. Who knows, it might have happened something like this:
One rare quiet evening at home in their little flat, CB was sitting at the table reading a newly published copy of Through the Looking Glass, when she suddenly came upon this very dialogue between Alice and the Queen. Breaking the silence she blurted out, “William, You must read this!” Slumped relaxingly in his easy chair, eyes half closed, he mumbled back, “Yes dear, when you’re finished. I’ll get around to it eventually.” “No! You must read it now!” She said. He read. They practiced. The rest is history.
The editorial above was written some thirty years later and bears witness to the result of that practicing, however it was inspired: “The Salvation Army’s doings have frequently been ridiculed by the frivolous, and given much pain to the morbidly discreet. But the purity of General Booth’s methods has never been questioned, while the immense good he has accomplished speaks for itself the world over.”
Booth was a practicing visionary, seeing the invisible and doing the impossible, no question about it. Vision is a prerequisite to Genesis. People are not naturally imbued with it; visioning takes practice, practice and more practice. The Genesis person is a vision practitioner.
Practitioner: “somebody who practices a particular profession…” – Encarta.
Faith: “It’s our handle on what we can’t see” – Hebrews 11:1, The Message.
Get a handle on it:
START PRACTICING!
Cyberspace Link: In this video segment William Booth says “No!” to “Volunteer” and “Yes!” to “Salvation.” Pay close attention to a sampling of the evangelical creativity (inyesvations) that followed in response to a series of repetitive yeses.
