Vision on a Horse

Follow me through these thoughts, even though they are random*.

I was reading the Bishop's post this evening about his four hobbies -- reading, gardening, historical research and ham radio operation. He advises us all to find a hobby. Do you have a hobby?

I have several, but the one that comes to mind is knitting -- I'm sure I've mentioned that before.
Hold that thought.

I then surfed over to Tuesday's Lectionary Leanings. Many of the ministers who posted there for the week are considering the use of Habakkuk for their sermons. A verse from the passage (Habakkuk 2:2)

Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.

Hold that thought.

In knitting there is a rule. If you make a mistake and wonder if you should "rip" out your knitting to correct it, ask yourself this question -- If someone were wearing this garment, riding a horse that went by, would someone watching notice the mistake? If not, then leave it in.

Would someone running by our churches see our vision? Is it plainly written on tablets so that a runner may read it? I mean that metaphorically. Is our vision so plain in what we do that someone who didn't know us, who just came in for worship, or for help, or to a community meeting in the building, or to drop his child off for preschool -- running through our faith community -- see our vision in what we do, in how we treat people?

Is our vision noticeable in our actions?

* I kind of cringe at the word random. Each year, in my old job, we would have Research Day. Students would present their research to those gathered. Inevitably, one of them would say, "Patients were randomly assigned to two groups." Mistake. This phrase was a red flag to one particular physician -- a physician who was usually serving as a judge. Whenever he heard this phrase, he would ask a challenging question. "How did you randomly assign them?" Usually, the answer was that patients went by turns into different groups. Eini-mene-mini-mo is not random. True random assignment requires a random number generator. My thoughts in this post are not random -- they are just oddly strung together!