Time to Build a Life-wide Vision

January is a bonus month for diet consultants. The combination of Christmas over-indulgence and 'turn-over-a-new-leaf' resolutions will send millions searching, over the coming days, for weight-loss solutions. And the best of them will offer the same message: weight-loss is not about tracking food intake or increasing exercise or changing attitudes or drinking more water or improving sleep patterns: it is about all of them together. Only a life-wide vision can impact lifestyle sufficiently to bring long-term change. The same is true of faith. Anything short of a life-wide vision will not do justice to the roots of faith. The Bible addresses our lives through the widest possible lens. The plans of God touch every corner of our culture. The only cry that fulfils the death and resurrection of God's son is the cry "all of life redeemed". Nothing that concerns us - physically, emotionally, spiritually; intellectually - does not concern our maker. By the light of faith everything is illuminated. Perhaps the drawback of many of our churches is not that our worship is not deep enough, but that it is not wide enough. It's time for a life-wide vision of what the mission of God can do.