DREAMS LOST

Today was a work at home day.  No clients but banking, helping mom & staining.  After I waited until this afternoon for it to warm up, I accomplished very little before it started to rain. The good news was that I was able to read the whole chapter six in WHEN GOD INTERRUPTS. Barnes talks of our church being our family. Taking care of each other is our family business. But just like in our families the church family fight and hurt each other as much as any family. We have to do a whole lot of asking and receiving of forgiveness. But that is part of our distinctiveness as a family. We know how to forgive. That is family business.  Interesting we think our Church family should be different.  We shouldn’t make mistakes.   We shouldn’t have to forgive or ask for forgiveness.  But we are just sick people trying to get healed. It is a journey. We are always learning and working at living this life better. So continue to forgive and ask for forgiveness. 

Speaking of families, Barnes talks about when we  honor our parents our days will be long in the new place to which the Lord is leading. The promise reminds us that we are on a journey.  We don’t have to agree with our parents.They are just doing the best the know how too.   Good or bad our lives are shaped by those who raised us. God wants us to honor the influence they have borne in our lives so that we will be free to receive the future.   How we are raised and our experiences in the world make us unique. God uses us to touch a dark world.  

He ends the chapter by talking about when our dreams are abandoned. We all have dreams. Dreams of being married. Dreams of having children. Dreams of being happy. Dreams  get broken. When our dreams are broke we losing hope. When we lose hope its essentially like another way of saying that we have lost our vision of the Savior. If we have focused too narrowly on the dream we thought the Savior would give us, then it is the dream that has become the savior and not Jesus.   We turn it around by not praying for the dream but praying to God himself. Eventually the dreams seem far less important than the relationship to the Savior. In time we can develop a passion to simply “be” with  God, every day.  And of course, that is God’s dream all along.  What do we do when we dream and our dreams don’t happen? Do we become bitter and angry?  It is so easy to let happen. I had a dream that didn’t happen way back when.  God helped me to lower my expectations.  Life isn’t like it is in the movies or books.   Life can be hard.   Once I learned that, I gave my dream to God and he gave me a new dream, a richer dream.  God is good.