In a week or two Major Campbell Roberts (from New Zealand) and I are publishing a new book on social justice called JUST Imagine - the world for God. 

In that book we suggest that often the reason for the world being so filled with injustice is because people have lost the ability to imagine it any differently. 

I've just finished the biography of Muhammad Yunis, the founder of Grameen Bank (a micro-credit bank for the poor) - who won the Nobel Peace Prize for economics and is a hero on poverty reduction. He starts his book with this:

"we can only build what we can imagine. only if we conceptualize a world without poverty can we start to build it." then he ends the book with the chapter, 'what would it be like?' here's a quote: 

"Can we really create a poverty-free world? A world without third-class or fourth-class citizens, a world without a hungry, illiterate barefoot underclass? Yes we can, in the same way as we can create 'sovereign' states, or 'democratic' political systems, or 'free' market economies. 

A poverty world would not be perfect, but it would be the best approximation of the ideal... it would be a world we could all be proud to live in."

It struck me that what I most dislike about harm reduction is it's agreement with despair. It's resignation of hopelessness, it's deal with 'fate'. I want to (and choose to) believe in a world where addicts can be completely free. not just manage with their addictions BUT COMPLETELY FREE... I feel like I'm one of a few voices who choose to speak with faith the things that aren't as though they are... but this week I heard a great holiness teacher, Alan Harley remind me through a Bible study on Isaiah 61 that God's salvation is BOUNDLESS... enough to save the whole world... so rich and so free.. I'm letting it wash over me again and then take me out to the depths of it... and join Him in redeeming the whole world. 

Just some thoughts from a shameless dreamer.