A Devotion for God-Sized Dreams

I bet, if I asked all of you, many of you would be able to remember a reoccurring dream from your childhood. It may be a nightmare, of spooky monsters or things that went bump in the night; or maybe you remember surfing with Elvis, or singing at Carnegie Hall, with skills you don’t actually possess in real life.

My kids, at 4 and 7, are at prime dream-remembering age. Sometimes, the scary dreams that wake them in the night have them crawling into bed with us at 1 am, shivering like leaves. And oftentimes, their dreams become the talk of our next morning’s breakfast conversation.

“Was it a good dream? A scary one?” we’ll ask them over cereal bowls and OJ, bedhead and cowlicks in full display. “What did the colors look like? What did you hear? Would you want to have that dream again?”

Dreams are these amazing powerful things because they allow us to stretch the limits of what we think is possible. They allow us to suspend reality, if only for a time. What perhaps seems improbable, ridiculous and fantastical, in the world of dreams, can be made real.

Scripture is full of stories of people having strange and wonderful dreams. In Genesis, Jacob dreams of a mighty ladder, with God’s angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth. Jacob receives God’s comfort and acceptance he didn’t think was possible.

Jacob is not the only figure whose dreams are God-filled. Joseph, Daniel, Pharaoh, Solomon, even Pontius Pilate’s wife – all have dreams that speak God’s wisdom and challenge in very direct, but also seemingly improbable ways.

For most of us, dreams remain a vague wakening memory – a hazy rendering of a faraway story. When we sleep, we dream in a reality that rarely seeps into the living world.

But when we dream with God, those dreams can transform our waking lives. Dreaming with God means that the boundary between impossible and possible becomes blurred; inviting God to dream with us means letting go of the limits we’ve put on what can happen in a week or day, or even an hour.

Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that a situation in your life or your work is helpless, or beyond repair. Maybe you’ve settled for “good enough” or the bare minimum or even just status quo.

Or maybe you’re just plain exhausted, running low on energy, time, motivation or spirit.

I’m here with this gentle reminder: recovery work is the work of dreams.

Recovery work relies on dreaming with God, joining in God’s dream for people, for homes, and for communities. It requires suspending what we think is possible and trading it for the vision that God says is possible.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds us

“God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine.”

What does your dream with God look like? Have you put dreams aside because you have told yourself they’re impossible?

What would it look like if all of us took seriously the job of dreaming with God?

What might be restored if we boldly lived out those dreams?

Here’s to the dreamers!

In peace,

Chaplain Amy