Dreaming of Dreams

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. - Joel 2:28

Many years ago in a little town in Texas, an older gentleman with whom we attended church told of a dream he had about the then nearly desolate church being filled with people.  It happened some years later that the church grew significantly, though I tend to think his dream spoke of a greater fulfillment.  I'm always struck when reading through the first couple of chapters of Matthew how critical dreams are.  First Joseph, traditionally viewed as much older than Mary, dreams that he should go ahead with his marriage.  Next the Magi, also doubtless older men, are warned in a dream against returning to Herod.  Then Joseph is told in a dream to go to Egypt.  After Herod's death, he dreams that they may return home.  Finally, he settles in Nazareth because of a dream.

I would be reluctant to change the course of my life based on a dream, no matter how vivid and convincing. Nevertheless, I can attest to the damage that not dreaming does to a person.  Lack of sleep means a lack of dreams.  I am always a better, more balanced person - and that's not saying much - when I get a chance to process everything in dreams, when my sleep is less disturbed.  It is almost as if dreams denied from lack of sleep invade my waking hours.  It makes me wonder about people who do senseless things, the perverts, the suicides, and the serial killers.  Are they simply overwhelmed by undreamt dreams? 

In Proverbs 29:18 we read:  Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.  The KJV says the people perish without vision, but the throwing off of restraint is simply the prelude to death. As a nation, we seem to have stopped dreaming.  We are blind.  We have no respect for any prophetic voice.  I am not talking about the people who call themselves "prophets" or, perhaps worse, "prophecy teachers".  The prophet's job is to proclaim God's truth and call His people to repentance with power, not give somebody a "word" about his backache.  Prophecy, dreams and visions pull back the curtain on the machinery behind the play.  It reveals what is normally hidden, unearths the buried truth, exposes the lies that support the daily delusions. 

As Christ could not have come into the world or survived to reach Golgotha without the dreams of men, so we will see no restoration or revival until our vision of the kingdom is quickened.  We need old men to dream Reality again.

The Dream Whip

Unless the Lord builds the house,

those who build it labor in vain. 

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

the watchman stays awake in vain.

 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.

– Psalm 127:1-2

To sleep, perchance to dream, as Hamlet says, is indeed a gift.  Hamlet is meditating upon death, as sleep is a little death.  They are intertwined, speaking one, of the other. 

 I don’t think God is un-American or French or anything.  He doesn’t tell us to be indolent or unconcerned, to cast aside vigilance and industry.  Jesus encourages us to watchfulness, but it is to watch and pray.  Guarding our lives, our families, and our possessions, laboring defiantly to build towers to reach heaven, apart from God, these are futile endeavors.  

One thing I have learned from trying to grow my own food is that I cannot defy nature.  Sometimes I can put plants out early, sow seeds early and do all right.  The ground will warm quickly, there won’t be a late frost and everything will germinate, develop,  and prosper.  Generally, though, it is better to work with the seasonal averages if I don’t want to have seed rot in the ground or frost kill off or stunt my plants.  

Times and seasons are important in seeking God.  Immorality and unrighteousness are never in season, but sometimes even our good works can be out of season.  We labor, we struggle, we plow and plant and water and nothing happens, or our efforts backfire on us.  Though we should not trust too much to appearances, our apparent failures may occur, not because we have done the wrong thing, but because we have done it at the wrong time.  We can get out of sync with the rhythm of God’s work.  

God’s rhythm includes resting and recreating, sleeping and dreaming.  Gagdad mentioned that Western Civilization may be built on Paul’s dream of the Macedonian Call:

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.  And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.  So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.  And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”  And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.  (Acts 16:6-10, emphasis added)

I think that our lives are built on dreams and visions, as well.  They don’t even have to be remembered; most probably are not.  Something in us pushes this way or that and we find ourselves interacting with people in places we can’t recall so much as dreaming of, though, somehow, it seems familiar.   

We discover 

and recover 

what we sought 

all unaware.   

Jesus tells us that the way to destruction is broad and easily found, while the narrow way is often obscure with no wide loads.  We think of these ways as descending – downhill to hell, versus ascending, climbing up the rough side of the mountain to heaven.  In these symbols, the Lord is telling is that, one way, He is with us, while the other way, we are on our own.  He is the Way, and we have to pay attention to the signs if we are going to get on the right road.  

It is a scientific fact that sleep-derivation will kill a man.  Not to dream God's dream is to miss God's path and be out of God's time, and to miss the Way of Life is a sleep from which we will not so soon awake. 

Made Out in the Shades

Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision — Acts 26:19

Visions are not as rare as many tend to think, but neither are they normally as dramatic and overwhelming as that which came upon Saul of Tarsus. I doubt that anyone is converted apart from a vision. We just don't call it that. We talk about a realization or a sudden understanding. It may not be, most likely it isn't, a direct vision of Christ. Instead we are stopped on our way by something we don't really understand. The light flooding into our eyes may not show us anything except our own blindness. The words we hear may give us only the next step rather than our ultimate destination.

Things that had been chafing us and challenging us at last confront us. We find ourselves pushed in a new direction. Remember that after his encounter with Jesus, Saul was blind for three days. Vision does not equal immediate clarity of purpose and direction. We are not necessarily like the Donald Pleasence character in "Hallelujah Trail" who, upon imbibing, would shout, "I see it now!"

Leading up to our house is a simple little drive made of limestone. We have a family or two of killdeer that live around our pond. They often come up and build their nest in the bare road. This involves creating a little hollow in the gravel where the eggs can rest. How they figure out the spots where the wheels or the mower will miss them is beyond my comprehension, but they do. They apparently depend upon the kindness of the stranger not to take them out with the trimmer. For weeks, I will see one of the adult birds doing the broken-wing draw play in front of my truck, tractor or bike. The little eggs are a silvery gray with black specks, and, unless one knows to look for them, they are hard to spot amid the grays and whites of three-quarter inch limestone chunks.

In a dream that I had a few days ago, I was walking on the driveway, and there, in the middle as usual, were two plover eggs. They looked a little odd, though, too small and too flat, too two-dimensional. I looked around and saw, off in the grass, two more eggs, larger and more natural in appearance. Knowing that I would run the mower over them, I decided to pick them up and replace them in the nest from which they must have been removed. Oddly, with the two speckled plover eggs, I saw another egg colored like a robin's, solid pale blue but much too large. When I stooped to pick up the eggs, I saw that the blue egg was really (or had turned into) a slightly flattened, roughly egg-shaped piece of soap — a half of one split at the long axis and set on that flat edge. That wasn't too surprising since we sometimes hang bar soap on the trees to freak out the deer. I looked down again and saw a lens from a pair of sunglasses lying on the road. I picked it up and held it in front of me.

If you have ever been out in the deep dark, like a remote woods on a moonless night, with only a lantern or flashlight, you have a good idea of how the mind works. Your mind is the dark forest. Consciousness is where the lantern spills its illumination. Dreams are a flash of lightning over the woods or a break in the clouds that allows the reflected light of the moon to bathe the world for a moment. Dreams are, by necessity, personal. My pastor used to say that we always have the interpretation with a dream or vision — Old Testament exceptions of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar notwithstanding.

Truth is fragile and must be maintained whole to bring forth life.

Truth must be sought out and protected.

If we are truly looking for truth, we will know it when we see it.

If we find truth off the beaten path, we should ask ourselves if our direction needs to change.

Handling truth requires cleansing. We must be obedient to it rather than using it for our own ends. Our motives must be at least 99 and 44/100ths percent pure.

It is always wise to remind ourselves that we often see only a dim reflection of reality — "in a glass darkly".

The Long War

There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David. But David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker. -- 2 Samuel 3:1

This is true for each of us personally, and it is true as well for the kingdom in an historic sense. We are engaged in a very long war that has many skirmishes, many operations, maneuvers and battles. Self is weakening even as the Spirit is strengthening. This isn't always plain in our conflicts and encounters day by day. I think, though, that God never loses ground He gains. Every act of obedience, every effort of discipline, and every moment of communion is an advance. I suppose that it is possible to engage in self-indulgence to the point that a position is lost. There may be some who become so enamored of self that they fall back and surrender. More likely they were self-sympathizers and collaborators in the first place.

For most of us the most dangerous weapons the enemy wields are discouragement and impatience. It is a long war and mostly a dull one. We are pinned down by habit and complacency -- and, yes, sometimes by cowardice. At other times, we get turned around in the fog of war and lose track of which is the real enemy.

Even though I can plug my MP3 player into the stereo in both our vehicles, I still like compact discs. We were in the truck Saturday, and I put in a CD I had burned and labeled "Fun Songs". It is a motley collection of bluegrass, Texas swing, and Bo Diddley. I strategically placed an Alan Jackson cut as number one so that my wife would not immediately yank it out and try something else. Several years ago, Jackson did a CD of cover songs called "Under Their Influence", or something like that, as a tribute to the country singers who had influenced him. Of course, my wife has this CD. One of the songs called “The Way I Am” was written by Sonny Throckmorton and based on a recording done by Merle Haggard.

I had never heard this particular song until I heard the Jackson version. I was immediately struck by the poignancy of it. It is about man who would rather be somewhere else doing something else but continues to do his job. The narrator wishes he were “down on some blue bayou\ a bamboo cane stuck in the sand\ But the road I’m on don’t seem to go there\ So I’ll just dream and keep on bein’ the way I am.” Many of us can look at our lives, especially as we get older and think that we are somewhat boxed in. We can identify when the song says: “Wish I enjoyed what makes my livin’\ What I do with a willin’ hand\ Some would run, but that ain’t like me\ So I’ll just dream and keep on bein’ the way I am”.

My job seems overwhelming and excessively demanding at times. I get so tired and frustrated that I begin to despair and lose heart. As the song played, my wife asked me, “If you weren’t working at this job, what would you want to do?” I could not at the time give her an answer because it is really two different questions, and it took me a while to sort them out. The first question is: if I didn’t have to work for a living, what would I do. The answer to that is: write poems, catch fish, and grow potatoes, beans, and blackberries. The second question is: what would I want to do to make a living. That is the question I answered at the time, and I said honestly, “I don’t know.”

There is a courage that is required to change and do the right thing. There is also an often neglected, sometimes disparaged courage required to stay in the trenches and see things through to the end, to not “follow our dreams” when that would do damage to others. Part of being a Christian is to think about how our own actions impact those around us, those who depend on us, who look to us for hope and help. Whether we thought we asked for that position or not, it is ours, and we are responsible. When we refuse to run and continue to do our often routine duty, even if we do it grudgingly, we hand self a great defeat in this long war. What people often call “soul-killing drudgery” is really “old-man-killing drudgery”.

I am winning the long war, so I’ll just dream and keep on being the way I am.

Illusions of the Grave Cave

The twelve gates are twelve pearls; each individual gate was made of a single pearl. The broad street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. – Revelation 21:21

Abraham lived in tents because he was looking for a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9-10). When Moses was told to build the Tabernacle, he was instructed to make the Holy of Holies a perfect cube of ten cubits, about fifteen feet high, wide and deep – to house the Ark of the Covenant on which God’s Presence dwelt. The City of God as described in Revelation is a cube as well, though a massive one – fifteen hundred miles across and high. The Lord seems to be telling us that His city, the kingdom, or heaven is very much a Most Holy Sanctuary wherein His Presence truly dwells. The size of the city hints at the grandeur and majesty of God. All the gold and the pearl gates and the twelve foundations of glorious stones are elements reflected in the types Moses created for the Tabernacle and the priestly attire of Aaron.

Consider for a moment that good, old-fashioned and endangered incandescent light bulb. In its small, humble way, it is a little like the sun, for it burns, giving off light and some heat. Still, if I were to say to someone who is unfamiliar with light bulbs that they are like the sun, when that person saw a bulb for himself, he might be justifiably disappointed. On the other hand, suppose somewhere a person lived who was familiar with the various kinds of artificial light sources but had never seen the sun, the moon, or the stars. Perhaps he is a cave-dweller living an exclusively subterranean existence. If we met this denizen of the caverns and began to tell him of the great light that illuminates the world, we might compare it to one of his little light. We might tell him to imagine a huge floodlight set high above his head. We might be poetic, eloquent and inspired in our description, yet when he saw the sun with his own blinking, shuttered, aching eyes, he would be stunned by the reality. No description could prepare him for the brilliance of the light or the burning heat of a deep summer day.

“Our God is a consuming fire” – You may have looked into the heart of a live volcano, but it will seem a tea candle compared to the fire of God. “Jesus is the light of the world” – We will know that metaphor for the pitiful thing it is when we face Him and, like John the Revelator, fall helpless at His feet unable to bear the brightness of His visage. We will know gold, pearls, and diamonds for the weak comparisons they are when we see the living Sanctuary in all its glory.

Even when we are blessed with glimpses through the fog, when we see a flash of glory in a dream or a vision, when our eyes are opened and we see “the chariots and horsemen of God” or “His train filling the temple”, it is hard to hang on to it. Others will tell us we have an overactive imagination. They will say we are extrapolating from the ‘real’ – the cave-dweller might say the same thing about our ‘sun’, if he never ventured to ascend. Someone will tell us that we just believe in such things because we want them to be so. In a way, that, at least, is true – except these are not self-indulgent, self-glorifying daydreams. If we think of self at all in the face of that glory it is to recognize our unworthiness and be humbled. Again, as my friend Eddie said, God will not allow us to think better of Him than He can be to us. He will not show us visions of stars when all He has to give us are 40-watt bulbs. If my dreams exceed the limitations of the world, then it is the world that needs to be cracked open.

Where did this come from?

Or, now for something completely different. I am a little hesitant to do this as I'm afraid some expert will read it an tell me something about myself I'd just as soon not know. But, what's the point of living if you don't live dangerously.

We live on a few acres out in the country and just below the house, there used to be a little pond (stock tank to Texicans) that wasn’t much more than a big mud puddle. I had it cleaned out and expanded a couple of years ago to be deep enough for fish, had it made kidney-shaped so that is covers about an acre.

It is situated mostly in the open. I have planted a few evergreens around it but I didn’t want a lot of trees blocking the sun and filling it up with leaves in the fall.

So this morning I dreamed about my pond.

#
In my dream, the pond is just full of leaves. I think my recently deceased father was there with me when we came up to the pond. I started to rake some of the leaves out and somehow the pond turned into something much smaller. It appeared to be built like an above-ground pool – still kidney-shaped. In the dream, the thought did cross my mind that my pond was bigger than this. But in typical dream-logic it made sense, more or less.

I think Dad suggested breaking the pool down to clean it rather than raking the leaves out and we proceeded to do this.

The pool was set up, not on the ground but on a platform, like a stage, with a backdrop behind it, and seats on the other side, looking down on it like a little amphitheater. The bottom row of seats was elevated off the ground at about the same level as the stage. There was a gap between the stage and the seats probably six or eight feet wide that dropped down to ground level. Possibly it was there for drainage, to let the water from the pool get off the stage without getting into the seats. You obviously weren’t meant to cross from the seats to the stage under normal circumstances because there were no steps on either side. The platforms were four feet high or maybe a little more. I know I stepped down into the gap from the stage and started to vault up to where the seats were, something I could normally do easily, but my arms and shoulders were exhausted from a workout earlier (in real life) and I gave it up.

After the pool was dissembled several family members appeared to help me put it back together. Dad was not one of them. I was a little concerned because I had disconnected some small tubes from the pool and wasn’t sure how we would connect them back up. It occurred to me that the people assisting me did not know what they were doing. We were beginning to get the bottom and sides up. We paused to talk about someone, a female – my mother (also deceased) I think – who “liked to turn on the lights out there and play [some kind] of music” so that people passing by could enjoy the scene.

#

I kind of think I know what this is about, but I am open to suggestions. Jung is OK, Freud not so much. Have fun.

A Garment of Light Woven in Darkness

He had sent a man ahead of them -- Joseph, who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with shackles; his neck was put in an iron collar. Until the time his prediction came true, the word of the Lord tested him. -- Psalm 105:17-19

Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob. He was also the chosen of God -- in many ways a type of Christ -- who was to provide the means for establishing Israel as a nation under the protection of the world power, Egypt. Joseph was his father's favorite by birth -- the eldest son of his beloved wife Rachel. Beyond that, Joseph was gifted with prophetic understanding and wisdom, a genius of sorts. Having to deal with him as the father's favored would have been bad enough for his brothers, but his gifts made him even more insufferable. The air of confidence, the sense of knowing, it would have come across as arrogance even if it wasn't -- and Joseph was only human. After all Joseph had a vision of God's plan: his brothers would bow down to him. He would rule over them.

Then the word of the Lord began to test him. Joseph had to learn that the ways of God sometimes pass through darkness and through pathways hidden to the sight of man.

Abused by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, Joseph did not lose faith. He made the best of it and did well. But the path led further down, as he was falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned. The word still tested him. What was in him? Even in the dungeons, his wisdom and integrity puts him in a place of trust and leadership. It doesn't seem like exactly what he had in mind, to be number one -- at the prison. Yet Joseph still shows no sign of bitterness, resentment, or any lack of forgiveness. He clings to God as that exalted vision tries him to the utmost.

When, at last, his gifts seem to give him an opportunity for a glimmer of hope, nothing comes of it. He continues to languish for two full years.

Then "the time" came. His prediction came true. God lifts Joseph. The path emerges into bright light and full view. Joseph is "suddenly" prime minister of the richest, most powerful nation on earth. His wisdom delivers not only the Egyptians, but his own family. Through Joseph, Israel and his descendents find favor in the court of Pharaoh. To his fearful brothers Joseph says, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good."

I see that I do not measure up to this attitude. Too often I hold onto things that should be released. I doubt God in the midst of trials and become depressed and hopeless, yes, even bitter. A brief trial is one thing, but something that drags on and on for years, how can that be God?

I need to remember that darkness is the time of rest. Rather than fretting and worrying in a trial, that is the time to take it as it comes and trust in God. If the path leads down – well, going downhill has advantages. As Jake Hess used to say, “Things will get better, get worse, or stay about the same.” When the night comes and no man can work, I will rest in the Lord. God means it for good.

Suffering, loss, and pain are not good things. Betrayal is not a good thing, yet the betrayal of a Judas brings salvation. God means it for good.

The shadowed path down, the road of testing and trial leads to the light. The word of the Lord will try me as He weaves my way in the dark, as He leads me to the light. God means it for good.