Well here we go again. The dream. Darn dream. Dreams are funny things. They dance around your head while you sleep. Although to the outside world you are laying there with your mouth open, slack-jawed, drool dampening your pillow - inside, your mind is engaging in bathing hippos or or going to class in your underwear. Dreams are a window to our unconsciousness according to Sigmund Freud. In the scientific word there are at least a few hundred fairly valid theories about the origins and manifestations of dreams.  |
| A Cardboard Box Village |
The dreams that came to the great dreamers in the Bible are called "prophetic dreams," dreams that come from God and in some way will speak God's word or desires. In the case of Jacob, his dream showed him that despite his poor choices that hurt others, he would still receive God's blessing given through his Grandpa Abraham and Ananias, as a follower of the recently crucified Christ, was being asked to go to Saul, a chief persecutor of Christ followers and "witness to him." God's dreams are ...different... than the bathing hippo dreams. These dreams give direction, they guide you or they give answers. True to God's way, these answers or direction may come slowly over our time. Peter wrote in his second letter, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day...but the Lord is not slow with His promises. Sometimes God's dreams unfold in this way. The puzzle pieces are the same, every time you dream but the understanding may take time. Or maybe some of us that have these dreams are particularly slow on the message God is trying to convey. That might be me and by might I mean is.
My box dream is really a dream about a village of boxes, large and small with people inside each one. In the center of the village there is a larger box. This box contains happiness, wholeness and life. The smaller boxes are incomplete and from that desire to find wholeness and happiness the people inside are searching for a way to or in the larger box. But they can't. It is as if they are wandering near, or around the place that would provide what they are lacking. The people are smart enough to know they need something. This dream wears me out! I have been dreaming this dream since 2002; twelve years. I know, a thousand is like one and one is like a thousand, yada yada yada. But Hippo washing is so much easier. When I dreamed that dream I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, while it seemed as though much fun was had, I was not about to embark on a life of hippo bathing or open a drive thru hippo wash. I woke up, chuckled and moved on. But this dream, these boxes, those people haunt my thoughts for days following this dream. This dreams wears me out because I know that it means I am to do something but I am unsure what. I have gained the understanding that the boxes are homes, gatherings of people that have yet to find God. God has been found in the larger box. Lately the dreams show that the larger box seems closed off; no windows or doors. I know that following the dream my heart aches for those wandering, seeking and not finding. I know that this dream that I have had at least 100 times in the last twelve years, has made significant changes in who I am and what I do. In twelve years I have answered the call to ministry, gone to seminary and work constantly to reach the unreached and those hiding. But still the dream.
God am I to lead the people to the box, am I to bust open doors and windows in the walls of this box or am I to let God out of that box!!! I am open to suggestions or insight. Give me a ladder to heaven or some strong words. <sigh>
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