I woke up this New Year’s Eve morning after having a
dream. In the dream I was asked to
speak at a conference. It was a
real honor to be there with so many highly educated people. But while we were there a bunch of
troubled kids, orphans and foster kids, came in and were stealing our things as
we participated in the conference.
Somehow, I ended up walking in on them stealing from us. At first I was really mad. My anger seemed to have no effect on
these kids. They didn’t care that
I was mad; they didn’t even seem to care that I had caught them. And then they had a song that they
sang, and I don’t remember all the lyrics, but it was about all of the
advantages that I had in life that they didn’t have: education, connections, money,
opportunity, and the things that separate the people who succeed in society
from the people who don’t; the things that separated me from them. There was one line in the song about
grace, about how all of these social advantages that I had paid the price for
grace in our society. Because I am
educated, I get opportunities.
Because I have money or connections I get things in society that they
don’t. There is no grace for them
because it is assumed that if they mess up it’s because they intend to. The
hammer comes down harder on them than it ever would on me.
At that moment, I felt that the Lord opened my eyes and
showed me that each of these kids had been hurt… mainly by parents. Some of them had been abandoned, or
intentionally hurt, or abused, or just didn’t have parents at all. I felt like God showed me that he is
our heavenly Father, and he has a love that will never disappoint them, will
never let them down, will never hurt them. Also, that he is the only one who can heal them, and that his
grace is completely free and is given equally to everyone who follows him. Then I felt like God said, “You need to
tell them about me.”
Somehow, I got them all to sit down, and I was able to meet
them where they were at, being honest about where I was at: I am educated, I
have a loving family, I’ve never gone through a lot of the things that they
have gone through. But, I still
have hurt in my life and that hurt affects the way I interact with others. Then I got to tell them who God is:
that he loves them enough to not leave them where they are. That he is the perfect Father who will
never hurt them, will never leave them or abandon them, and that his grace is
free. When we mess up, he loves us enough to not leave us there in our
mistakes. He loves us enough to
changes us, and give us his Holy Spirit, and make us new.
Then I got to tell them that for some reason God chooses to
demonstrate his love for us through each other.
In some way, each of us can relate to one of the positions
in this dream. Honestly, each of
us at least started out like the kids in this dream; maybe we’re still like
them. Either way, we need to
decide what we’re going to do about it.
If we are following Christ, God wants to use us to show his love to
those around us. There are so many
people who don’t yet know him; people that he loves dearly, lives he wants to
change. We need to be obedient to
God. Who are we sharing him with
this year? Who’s life does he want
to touch through us? In what ways
do we need to submit to him by obeying the call to share his truth with
others?
Happy New Year!
Let’s make it count for God’s kingdom!
