The Excitement of Living with Vision
There is nothing like living your life with vision—with purpose! I use an exclamation point here because I know what it’s like living without a vision, and it’s not fun! Living without a vision produced boredom that led me toward dissatisfaction and discouragement, causing me to embrace terrible sin habits like pornography to ‘cope’ with my lack of satisfaction. I never really coped, however, as the act of pornography and masturbation just led to my feeling emptier and paralyzed, unable to decide what to apply my mind to because of how condemned I felt sinning against the God I serve (and hurting my wife in the process).
Proverbs 29:18 says it best:
Just recently I was reminded of a dream from December of 2021 where I was working on websites that were highly creative, incorporating 3D elements and camera movements that truly made for a visual experience. Upon waking from the dream, I was thrilled knowing that that will become a reality one day. Now it’s December of 2022 and I am excited as ever to being the learning process toward making that dream become reality.
Christian Film Conference
This dream began to resurface as a result of serving ICVM with social media services from our business Arising Co. ICVM is a group of Christian Filmmakers that carry such a heart for the Lord and use their gifts and talents to help other Christian Filmmakers grow in their ability and network for additional experience. They had their annual Storytelling conference last month and we were able to become sponsors for the event by assisting them with their social media and advertising.
Because of a friend Jim (who runs The Revelation Collective in Winter Garden, FL) informed our friend John from Zinco Tools that we do social media services, John reached out to us and we were able to be introduced to the world of filmmaking by meeting numerous Producers, Screenwriters, Actors, Professors, and more at this conference. If you’re reading this John, thank you so much as we would not have had this blessing had you not reached out!
Back to the story.
The conference ends and we begin to engage with various leads. While setting up a meeting with a Producer, I remembered my dream from 2021 and knew that it was now time to put in the work and time necessary to see it fully realized. How do I go about it though?
Enter WebGL
I began to search for sample websites online that featured robust 3d elements to craft an experience for their website visitors. I hopped on over to awwwards.com and happened to find amazing samples such as The Sea We Breathe and I was taken aback. Exploring some more, I learned that WebGL (a graphics library akin to OpenGL but for the web) was working under the hood of many of the sample sites seen. Diving deeper into it, however, had me lost with no sense of direction due to the sheer difficulty of the learning process.
WebGL code is written and executes on a computer’s GPU (Video Graphics Card — not CPU) to enable a highly-performant display of graphics (that can be animated) on a desktop or mobile web browser. It’s insanely powerful, but taxing to learn. I’m the type of person that grabs a course or a set of books and begins to study and apply the knowledge learned in a structured manner. I knew that there had to be an easier way though, and then I stumbled upon Three.js, a 3D library that uses some WebGL and their own solutions to make it easy to draw 3D elements on a website.
Vision in Sight
With this new knowledge, I set out to discover websites made with Threejs and found an absolute gold mine in inspiration through Bruno Simon’s portfolio. Trust me, check out his website—you won’t be disappointed. One of his projects that especially caught my attention was Chartogne Taillet. At first glance, I began to think about experiences like this in the form of Christian teaching:
- What if there existed a website like this that shows Ancient Israel to provide a biblical narrative experience to website visitors?
- What if books can be rendered to a website with this tool so as to provide an animated story book all in the palm of someone’s hands without having to download anything?
I’m sure they already exist, but I haven’t found them (especially pertaining to the Christian faith). What if this is the purpose behind the dream God gave me? I can only find out if I obey this leading and stirring in my heart to see believers being enriched further in God’s word and presence while also creating experiences that can serve to help nonbelievers engage with the scriptures and ultimately God Himself.
Why is it Exciting?
Living with vision should be exciting because God created you for good works that you should walk in them. Knowing that this vision was birthed from God (because I did not imagine myself in this career field), I can be excited about how God will orchestrate the events, the relationships gained, the people served, the character development, and more that will inevitably come from this.
It’s like Jesus responding to his disciples that His food is to do the will of His Father. When we’re in the will of God, our sustenance and energy comes from living out His will for our lives. Knowing that this is part of His will excites me because I know that every good and perfect gift comes from Him, and that He will certainly use this experience in ways I never conceived.
Aside from loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, as well as loving my neighbor as myself and making disciples, I get to take on this assignment to proclaim His glory wherever it may land. That’s something to be excited about!!
Study Time
Where does this all leave me? Studying, and a lot of it. I don’t know when I’ll have a functional project going as I make time to study while also running Arising Co and serving clients. I did set a goal that I would have something of substance by March and I look forward to sharing that here in an article covering the process of creation.
I especially look forward to serving clients with these creative experiences to highlight their services in a powerful way to their ideal market. This brings sheer joy and excitement, knowing that although I don’t yet see it in reality, I see it. That’s the power of living with vision, and boy am I excited. I’ll leave you with this, though I do not know how credible it is though I’ve found this event told numerous times. At the opening of Walt Disney World, Walt Disney’s wife was asked by a reporter what Walt would have said if he could have lived to see the very park itself, to which she replied, “He did.”
Walt Disney saw it because the vision was real to him first, and I can’t begin to fathom how excited he must have been working towards that vision.