Dreams

I think about dreams a lot. Not the kind you have when you're sleeping. Dreams: as in the desires of your heart, what you'd love to do or be if you could do or be anything. I believe God has purpose in giving us dreams. Dreams are gifts that are to be offered back to God. Several times in my life He has required me to lay my dream upon his sacrificial alter, allowing me to wonder if it will be burned or given back to me to live out. In any case, the very act of laying it upon the alter says to God, "this is your gift and I entrust it to you. It is not mine to control or hoard." This act of releasing your dreams is what I think God is after. It can be excruciatingly painful when God asks us to give up a dream permanently. But He is worthy of our trust. He has proven it over and over and over. He is trustworthy. I found this poem moving as I read it today and I think it explains things a little better than I just did.


Dreams die hard,
And they should.
But not so the dreamer.

Dreams are the stuff that living is made of,
And what keeps us reaching and growing - and glowing.

Dreams are that part of us that hitches to a star
And sprinkles whatever darkness may be with hope.

Dreams are at once fragile and resilient,
fleeting and persistent,
comforting and disturbing,
magnificent and absurd,
possible and impossible.

They must not be held too tightly,
for they need room to breathe.

They must not be held too loosely,
for they need the nourishment of loving attention.

Yet not all dreams were meant to be.
Some serve a higher purpose in dying.
And as with any death,
The survivor often loses heart.

But the dreamer must not die with the dream.
The grieving must become the altar upon which to offer the loss
and ask for grace to dream again.

And when the grieving has done its purifying work
The dreamer will emerge to find
that the death of one dream gives birth to another,
Another perhaps in every way more usable in the kingdom.

Yes, dreams die hard,
And they should.
But not so the dreamer

For when God possesses the dreamer,
He will mold the dream,
AND IT WILL BE RIGHT.


- Verdell Davis
(from her book "Let Me Grieve but not Forever")