TO KNOW THE Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) is to know it would not long survive the Reagan era. The Office of Management and Budget marked the program for termination earlier this year and it now appears the program will not exist after fiscal year 1983.

Born in the early days of the Great Society, when Americans had more faith in visible hands than in their invisible counterparts, VISTA was created in the belief that Americans might be willing to devote a year of their lives to the non-military service of their country. Since 1964, 70,000 did, establishing credit unions, job programs, small energy projects and a wide variety of other activities that helped poor people take control of their own lives.

But the benefits VISTA gave to communities it covered, the volunteers it employed and the nation it served are not the kind that show up dramatically on graphs; consequently, VISTA is probably doomed. But even if VISTA's loss may not diminish the gross national product, we will be a poorer nation without it. VISTA was among a group of programs that, for all their problems, announced to the world that the American government saw what was wrong with this country and tried to change it. And perhaps more importantly, VISTA was conceived in the belief that there were ordinary people who would want to spend time and energy in the noble pursuit of a better America. By giving up on VISTA and the spirit that gave it life, the government will be losing something that Americans once believed--and we still believe--was worth saving.