“Dream on, dream
on, dream until your dreams come true.”
These are lyrics
from an old Aerosmith song from their debut album in 1973. And the Christmas
season is a time of the year where dreams do seem to come true. People seem to
be more generous. Those Advent themes of Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace seem to be
living breathing realities.
Today
I have been reading about a dream in the Bible. It’s part of the Christmas
story, but not part that we focus on much. It seems like when we think of Jesus’
birth we think about Mary, his mother, and the angel Gabriel coming to her
saying, “Fear not”. And of course there is her song, called the Magnificat,
that is recorded for us in Luke chapter 2. But the dream I have been thinking
about today was a dream where an angel appeared to Joseph, Mary’s fiancée, and
told him that the baby Mary would have was “conceived by the Holy Spirit. She
will give birth to a son and you are to name him Jesus because he will save
people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
Gabriel
appears to have somehow visited Mary when she was awake, but Joseph was visited
in a dream.
This
got me thinking about some of my dreams. Most of them I don’t remember, and the
ones that I think I will remember I still end up forgetting unless I tell
Heather about them as soon as I wake up. Dreams have a tendency to fade away
pretty quickly. But that’s to be expected, there is a difference between dreams
and reality. To say that someone is a “dreamer” is to imply that they are not
grounded in the facts and reality of life, that they envision or have hopes of
something that is unrealistic and improbable.
“You
may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”, those are words to
another one of my old favorite songs by John Lennon.
But
Joseph didn’t just forget about his dream, he actually changed what he had
planned on doing because of the dream. (Read the whole story in Matthew
1:18-25) The dream that he had was the way that God chose to communicate with
him. To let Mary know what was going to happen the angel just apparently showed
up, to get Joseph’s attention the angel came in a dream.
I
wonder if this is still not the case sometimes. Maybe we men are just so busy
that we wouldn’t even notice the angel, or listen to what was being said. Maybe
it is when we are asleep that we are cognizant of listening because it is only
then that we are still and let our brains be quiet. Maybe it is only then when
we are not planning something out or working on a conversation in our head.
Maybe
there is something to this dream of Joseph. I think that God has placed a dream
inside of each of us. You know what I am talking about, right?
I
am blessed to serve as a pastor in this community, so I have had a chance to
see many people’s God-dreams come true. God-dreams are those dreams of
something better for this world, some way to help people in need. But those
kind of problems are always too big. So we tuck these dreams away, and when we don’t
talk about them they begin to fade, just a little at first, then the fog of
reality covers up our dreams and soon they are forgotten. But not completely. That’s
how dreams work. We know that there is something there, something nudging at us
to remember, but we just can’t quite get back to it. There are other things,
more “real” things that are clamoring for our waking attention.
But
when faith in God is placed alongside the God-dream, amazing things happen. We actually
become the body of Christ reaching others in new and meaningful ways. Lives are
transformed, the gospel is lived out, grace abounds, and real change occurs.
And it started when you realized a dream that God had given you. What are you
going to do with dream that you have almost forgotten? It’s still in there.
Pray for it, reach for it. Move some of those real important things out of its
way. There it is. Dust it off…are you starting to remember?
Now,
dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true and Merry Christmas!
