Daring to Dream
God Draws Near, Part 4: An Advent Series
Today’s reflection is the fourth and final installment of the Advent series called God Draws Near. You can read or listen to the previous parts on Substack using these links:
A Sense of An Ending, You are Preapproved, and Seeing What’s Real.
The Woodlands is also available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
And now for Part 4:
Daring to Dream
On some mornings I wake from a dream so winsome and vivid that I long to lay my head back on the pillow to recapture it if only for just a moment.
Yet, within an hour of rising from bed, the people and landscapes and improbable adventures of those dreams have mostly faded like the morning mist. I’m left only with the lingering emotions evoked by my nighttime fantasies.
It’s common to forget our dreams. Researchers insist that everyone dreams, even though a relatively small percentage of us report that we never remember having done so.
It occurs to me that from time to time some of us—maybe all of us—need to be encouraged to remember how to dream. By “dream” I don’t mean how the brain automatically processes our past while we sleep.
What the unconscious mind does with those nightly images, emotions, and memories is crucial for our mental health. But that work is mostly about weaving yesterday into a coherent whole—making sense of what has happened in our lives so far. We also dream about tomorrow. In waking life our imagination casts visions about how things might be in the future.
Yet when we are driven by fear, cynicism, selfishness, or simple weariness, we can forget how to dream. Or more accurately, we can succumb to or even actively pursue dreams that diminish us and impoverish the world we inhabit. Recapturing and restoring our ability to dream is crucial, because these dreams will dare us to hope, guide our actions, and, as a result, shape the world that we will pass on to generations to come.
Dread, unfortunately, is another form of dreaming. We imagine impending doom, heartbreak, and suffering with such intensity and frequency that we assume a habitually defensive posture and strike out repeatedly at perceived threats.
Some dreams are narrowly focused on self-interest. We drive relentlessly toward the objects of our own perceived self-interest, justifying harm done to others along the way as collateral damage. These are unhealthy, unholy ways to dream.
In the stories of Jesus’s birth and early childhood, Matthew’s Gospel teaches us a better way to dream, a way more suitable to our very being as the image of God. Dreaming God’s dream and letting it guide our actions fuels our hope as we participate in the coming of the Kingdom of heaven on earth.
Here’s what Matthew tells us:
When Mary became pregnant, a dream led Joseph to stand by her and to care for her baby. (Matthew 1:18-25)
As Herod descended upon Bethlehem to slaughter every child two-years-old and under, a dream alerted Joseph to scoop up Mary and Jesus and to flee to Egypt. (Matthew 2:13-15)
Finally, in Egypt another round of dreams assured Joseph that it was safe to return to Israel and to raise Jesus in Nazareth. (Matthew 2:19-21)
These were not merely dreams churned out by Joseph’s unconscious. They were God’s dreams unfolding themselves in Joseph’s own soul. Joseph did not see a perfectly clear vision of the final peace that passes all understanding. Instead, he got word about taking the next step, a limited step that moved in the direction of the world that God dreams.
Joseph was not naive or fanciful. He would have been all too aware of the nightmare that the world could be. He had barely escaped the atrocities perpetrated by Herod in Bethlehem. The Roman occupation of Israel was brutal. People he knew and loved had probably been intimidated, beaten, and perhaps even imprisoned or executed by the Empire’s forces.
And yet, he had the courage to dream God’s dream. To pursue in his small way the vision that God has for us all. He dared to hope. His charge would be to care for Mary and Jesus, yet his courage arose from a broader vision of God’s dream for us all.
God’s dream is that we all recognize one another as God’s beloved children. No hunger goes unfed. No one wants for shelter or health care. No wars. No crime. Mutual affection displaces loneliness, and love drives out fear once and for all.
When Jesus had grown to adulthood, someone once asked him to name the greatest commandment of all. Jesus responded that we are to love God with every particle of our being and to love our neighbor as if our own life depends upon it.
In other words, Jesus taught us to love what God loves, how God loves it. In our fractured, heartrending, messy world, loving like this means that we must remember to dream what God dreams, to dream of a world in which everyone is devoted to making everyone’s life worth living.
This essay is adapted from my book Looking for God in Messy Places.
Food for Thought
“My prayer is that, by grace, we all will be emboldened to lean into the wisdom, strength, power, and grace that come to us, whenever we find ourselves at a decisive moment. May you and I dare to believe that we are where we are meant to be when that moment comes, doing the work that is ours to do, fully present to our lives. For it is in this work that we learn to be brave.”— Mariann Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave
“Advent reenacts a past event as if it is new each year. And every week, in liturgical churches, we are reminded that “Christ will come again.” That’s the other Advent—the future one that hasn’t happened yet. Advent is about both of those times: the first coming of Jesus’s birth and the second coming of Jesus’s return. It is also true that Jesus comes to our hearts, a kind of personal Advent for every Christian. We’re waiting for Jesus—a memory, an experience, and a hope.”— Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year
Inspiration
First Coming (excerpt) by Madeleine L’Engle
He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release….
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
A Prayer
Holy God, stir in us the courage to trust Your future. Open our hearts to Your restoring love and guide us to take the next faithful step. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
That’s it for now, friends. Thanks for being here. Look for Christmas reflections starting Monday. Until next time, be well and God bless.
Jake
P. S. You can join me in funding ministries in underresourced communities by upgrading to a paid subscription. All the proceeds from my substack, speaking honoraria, and book royalties go to this purpose.
Thanks sgain for good words strung together well. They are reassuring in a time of grief here in Australia due to the shootings at Bondi.
Interesting read.