Dream

Each month I gather with a group of parents preparing to celebrate the gift of baptism—God’s action of calling, naming, claiming, and surrounding them in love. These mothers and fathers have hopes and dreams for their mostly brand-new bundles of pure grace and joy that they hold so closely in their arms and so deeply in their hearts. They are joy-filled, every one of them as they hope for the Dream of God to come true in and through their children.

Not long ago in the midst of one of those gatherings, the thought of the sheer potential for transformation represented in the room was remarkably moving. As I looked out over the room full of moms and dads filled with hopes and dreams for their children, I considered the potential impact that any or even all of these children could have on the planet. Following the example of Christ and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, these children could be the agents of hope and change, grace and newness of life borne out of the Dream of God. Any one or all of them could be the ones through whom the Dream of God for a world at peace, the Dream of God for a planet free from the pain of brokenness of every kind, the Dream of God for the restoration of all things could finally come true… the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything bringing peace out of war, love out of hate, trust out of fear, hope out of despair, truth out of falsehood, health out of sickness, wholeness out of brokenness, life out of death.

I believe that this Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything unleashed in the lives of all of these children is the bright, sundrenched, powerful, transformational, Spirit-breathed, other-worldly, and at the same time, very ‘this-worldly’ dream that God wishes to let loose in their lives. And I believe that any one or all of the children represented in any room full of moms and dads could at any moment dream the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything.

A little girl crawls into her warm bed one night and falls fast asleep and she dreams the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything. The next morning she rushes to the bus stop and tells her friend about the Dream. The Dream catches on as those two little girls sit together on the bus on their way to school, giggling and laughing out loud catching the attention of other kids around them. And when one of the other kids on the bus asks, “What are you giggling and laughing out loud about,” the little girl describes it in riveting detail and in living color! There is a little boy sitting in a seat three rows back who overhears the Dream-of-giggling-and-laughing-out-loud conversation. And several days later unable to get the Dream out of his head, he takes out a piece of drawing paper and with some crayons and colored pencils begins drawing a picture on that paper—the picture of the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything that he heard on the bus that the friends were giggling and laughing out loud about earlier in the week. In time, the picture winds up on the front of the refrigerator in the kitchen. It is held fast right there with a big magnet, and The Dream catches on.

Months later, there is a dinner party and the parents have invited friends to join them. Several of them are standing in the kitchen, chatting away, when one of them happens to notice a drawing on the refrigerator. It is the picture of The Dream. One of the parents, a dance teacher, asks about it. She is inspired by the colors, the shapes—the grace and movement that she sees in the Dream-picture. Weeks later, still captivated, the dance teacher interprets the Dream-Picture into a Dream-Dance and teaches it to a group of young dancers. One of them, a young man, dances the Dream-Dance at a recital. There is a large audience, and the oldest brother of one of the dancers watches with rapt attention. Moved to tears, he watches the Dream-Dance. Weeks later, back in the studio, he describes the Dream-Dance to a friend who plays the cello, and the Dream catches on.

The cellist plays music in the park. The park is a large green space in the midst of the city and on this bright, sunny day, there are many people playing in the warm sun. There is a family enjoying a picnic close by, and as the cellist plays her music inspired by the Dream-Dance, the children are flying kites. They are running, jumping, giggling and laughing out-loud as their colorful kites full of wind and sun pull against the strings held tightly in their hands. People all over the park are watching as the kites dot the sky with color and movement. There is something remarkably captivating as the dancing kites dive and soar to the rhythm of the wind.

A photographer sits on a hill nearby. He is taking pictures of the kites being flown by the children as their giggling and laughter mingles with the melody of the cellist whose friend in the recording studio shared the story of the dance at the recital created by the dance teacher who saw the picture on the refrigerator that was colored with crayons and colored pencils by the little boy on the bus who overheard the little girl share the dream of The Dream. The Dream catches on.

The cellist in the park plays the beautiful melody and the sounds of Dream-Song float up and over the crowd in the park until it reaches the hearing of a young woman at an outdoor coffee shop. She is a writer; she is writing. As the music moves over and around her table, the story that she has been struggling to write suddenly falls into place. In a flood of words and images, the story flows from her fingers into her laptop and onto the page. A week later after she shares a story with a number of friends, one of them who is gifted at speaking retells the story to a number of other friends. The story is Dream-like, like no other story, like no other dream. In time, the story is illustrated, printed, bound and finally published. The Dream catches on.

Years later, a young woman in medical school is in a bookstore. She picks up a book and reads the story written by the woman at the sidewalk coffee shop. Something happens deep inside; in her mind, the disparate pieces of a medical conundrum that she has and her colleagues have been researching with for so long all at once become clear. She hurries to the laboratory, she gathers her colleagues around her. They organize their thoughts, they rearrange the details, they run the tests, and they cross check their information when finally, one of them realizes that they’ve stumbled upon a possible hope for an impossible dream; a treatment for an illness, a balm for a brokenness, a remedy for a malady, a healing for a heartache. They discover the potential cure for deadly disease. The Dream—the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything comes true.

The Dream for health and wholeness that was imagined by a medical student who randomly picked up a book that was written by a writer sipping coffee one afternoon who heard a cellist playing melodies in the park where children giggled and laughed out loud and flew kites with their families while a photographer snapped pictures, created hope because a record producer attended a dance recital while a crowd gathered to watch young dancers dance the Dream-dance created by a dance teacher who was moved at a dinner party by a drawing stuck to a refrigerator by a child who giggled and laughed out loud on a bus full of children on the way to school after a long night of dreaming the Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything.

Nearly every month I gather with a group of parents. Full of hopes, we gather to celebrate The Dream that all of the children represented in that room will be the ones through whom this Dream-of-God-that-changes-everything comes true.