Dream On

We humans seem prone to disdain the familiar and long for the sparkle and delight of the stars. Yet I have never met a single person over 30 who says that their life has turned out just exactly the way they dreamed it would when they were teens. We pretty much all end up having to work, do some stuff we don’t really enjoy, be faithful in the minutiae of life. You know, grow up.

I am not suggesting that we give up on dreaming. People without dreams are sort of walking dead. (“Without vision, the people perish.”) Those who dare to dream and work toward what they long to do are those who achieve great things.

Did you ever notice how many people have long periods of waiting in seeming obscurity before they are able to realize their dream? There was a prince, with his high education as a royal in Egypt, who took high-handed action to save his people and ended up fleeing to the wilderness to stay alive. For forty years he was “lost”. I have a hunch he thought many times that seeing his people freed from slavery was only a pipe dream.

One of my more recent favorite stories is of Grandma Moses, who showed artistic promise when she was just a child. Then life got so busy and full of serving her family that she didn’t pick up brushes and paints until she was 78 years old. But then- Wow! She painted nearly 1600 pieces before she died at age 101.

I don’t understand God’s timeline, and I certainly cannot assure you that your dreams will come true. So when the doors don’t open, the plans fall through, the sickness is not healed, the spouse never materializes, the travel visa gets snarled in red tape… what then? Solomon said this: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” Sometimes there is not a shred of evidence that the thing longed for will ever become reality.  We can choose to accept the present as a gift (pun intended), as the Best, right now, from a loving Providence. He gives joy instead of heart sickness.

Dream on, my friends, and believe that your times are in His hands!