What’s in a dream?
I am walking across what seems to be an endless stretch of desert, with each step I hear my feet sink further and further into the sand. Each step is harder to make. The heat is unbearable as I stop and wipe my brow and replace my hat as I look up at a cloudless sky.
I am walking towards a mountain range. I don’t know where I am headed but I know the journey is one of life and death. If I don’t make it to where I am going I will simply fade into the sand that envelopes my feet never to be seen again.
It is amazing where dreams can take us as we lay safely in our beds. Sometimes the dreams are pleasant and paint pictures of hopes we have ahead of us. At times they carry us back in time to visit people and places that only now reside in our memories.
So many times in a dream I have reached my arms around my grandmother on the front porch of the mountain homestead in the valley below the Gravelly Spur Mountain or sat around the dinner table with my dad and mom in Atlanta.
After such a fond dream experience, I wake so refreshed almost smelling the pork chops, green beans and fried squash that were on my plate on the dinner table.
Just the same after the trek through the wilderness of the desert, I have awakened feeling as if I lost the middleweight boxing championship after 20 rounds.
The Biblical story of Joseph tells us how he was able to define what was ahead by the dreams that were presented to him.
I do believe that in dreams, God will sometimes share with us His vision for some aspect of our future and allows us to revel in the comforts of the past when they are needed.
So why was I in the desert trudging along in the heat. I am guessing that some task that I am focused upon is pulling me on a long arduous journey taking me away from something of greater importance.
Whether that is the best interpretation, I don’t know, I am not gifted as Joseph but I do know that in my youth dreams afforded me some unexpected guidance that yielded some of God’s gifts in my life.
That does not mean that I think every dream that we experience includes wisdom about our life, some of them simply reflect the whimsy within us allowing a little hop, skip and a jump down the yellow brick road within our head.
Sometimes we will meet those who have impacted our lives; sometimes we will see circumstances imprinted there by the media that we see; sometimes we just take a journey that we cannot take in real life.
No matter what you may think of your dreams, I pray that they are always pleasant and fill your life with warmth, comfort, joy and the blessings that will extend beyond many lifetimes.
