Imagine experiencing a future of such beauty and possibility
that it transforms the way you think about reality and the choices you make in the
present. That’s what happens to Casey Newton—an optimistic teenage girl who
aspires to be an astronaut in a diminishing-NASA era—whenever she touches a
lapel pin with the letter ‘T’ on it in the Disney film, Tomorrowland.
Casey is one of many dreamers, artists and inventors who have
been given a glimpse of Tomorrowland in hopes of shaping a better future for
humanity. That vision sends her on a remarkable and risky journey that changes
the way she sees the world—and the fate of a humanity on the brink of
self-destruction.
I resonate with Tomorrowland’s
theme that our vision of the future can transform the way we live now. Early church
believers fixed their vision on a future that helped free them to live risky,
transformed lives that changed the world.
“Human life and consciousness requires, by its very nature,
a projected future,” says Dallas Willard in The
Divine Conspiracy.
Unlike our present culture, which fixes its visions of
humanity’s future on a closed-system of materialism, Jesus presents us with the
reality of an unrestrained kingdom and “a future as good and as large as God
himself,” says Willard.
Scripture tells us we will reign with God, and we shall be
as the resurrected Jesus (1 John 3:1-2, Phil 3:20), who was not restrained by
space, time and the physical limitations of our bodies. The mortal part of us,
says Willard, will be “swallowed up by life” in a world restored, “a kingdom
come in its utter fullness.”
It will be a life brimming over with beauty and possibility
beyond our imagination—but our embracing of and belief in the reality of that future
is imperative to our life now.
In order live in the kingdom, says Willard, “we need to have
firmly fixed in our minds what our future is to be like… It must be something
we can now plan or make decisions in terms of... In this way our future can be
incorporated into our life now and our life can be incorporated into our
future.”
In Tomorrowland,
the present world is broken like our own. And like our world, too many do
nothing.
“In every moment there's a possibility of a better future, but
you people won't believe it—and because you won't believe it you won't do what
is necessary to make it a reality,” one character tells Casey. “People don’t
care about a better future because it doesn’t cost them anything today.”
Like Casey, the journey to our glorious future requires a
risk-taking kind of life—a “lay down your life, pick up your cross” kind of life.
But the result is the experience of that future breaking into our world. We experience
the fullness of that future Kingdom now.
And the experiences we have in this life, says Willard, “fill us with
anticipation of a future so full of beauty and goodness we can hardly imagine.”
Our own experiences of that future—be it from Scripture, a
breath of the Spirit, a moment in the Kingdom of God’s family—remind us that not
only what is come but also here and now is overflowing with possibility, beauty
and restoration.
And as we transform and live out together that reality,
others can see it too. We become like Tomorrowland’s
lapel pins, giving others a glimpse of a glorious world and future breaking
into this one today.
This post originally appeared as a column at MWR.