Isn’t dreaming just the greatest? It’s limitless what our brain can spin as a tale in our sleep. We can fly, build (anything!), be movie stars, famous musicians, scholars, sleuths extraordinaire, and on and on. The sense of reality during one such session is amazing! Colors, sound of voices, meeting people from long ago mixed with unrelated people from yesterday. There’s even a sense, even though we rarely know where we are, that we’re in charge of proceedings. That is until the alarm rings, and the whole episode evaporates with our first blink. The really good dreams, the exciting or fun ones, are the most disappointing to lose. The reality is, they weren’t real in the sense of the ‘real’ world. They were vapor, caused by pillows and blankets and fatigue and that extra helping of BBQ ribs. Usually, our nighttime reveries wisp away forever like the smoke of an extinguished candle.
Our in-Jesus hope is far from being like that, merely a disappointing, fleeting fantasy. It’s like forged, tempered steel, born of passionate endurance and solid strength of character, all worked in us, over time, by problems and trials. That’s the hope furnished in our salvation. That’s the confidence we stand in, confidence that we can know this hope with a greater assurance than we know our own names. The best part is that it doesn’t matter who we are. It’s all the same if we’re the kid from a nowhere town, a messed-up family, the prom king or queen from an exclusive high school, the misfit kid, lonely and nerdy, or any other weighty, troubled background. Jesus chooses us, so we have to give up all hope of ever having a better past – and learn to rest in the undiminishable, unextinguishable hope that he alone provides. Are we aware that he’s sending out a Fresh Start invitation still today? If we accept, we could be living a dream. PD
