Better Than Dreaming

This week at Trinity, Jill Boscoe was our guest speaker for Christian Life Week. A kind but brisk, approachable but wise, jolly but profound woman of 75, Jill has definitely shared some life-changing stories and perspectives on campus this week...and one in particular stood out to me. In chapel today, she spoke of dying to the old self, the sinful nature. That part I'd heard before, and I was feeling pretty good about it. I'm awakening, right? God's getting rid of my old self as we speak, and I'm pretty solid about what that will look like. Right?

Well, partly. I'm aware that I'm being made more aware, which makes some amount of sense. But as Jill explained what aspects of the old self we need to die to, she mentioned dreams. I first thought of dreams as in big plans for the future, ambitious visions, or idealistic escapes - Jimmy Stuart from It's A Wonderful Life came to mind. That's what I associated with dreams: a longing for something to happen that is almost achievable, but constantly cast aside for the sake of practicality. Then Jill began reading her own dream she had to die to: a very personal, very relational dream that wasn't a borderline unrealistic ambition, but an emotional and spiritual desire for her mother to come to Christ. She endured heartache and distance, longing for her mother's heart. My own heart wrenched when she told us of her mother's death after never coming to witness Jill at her ministry. But then, as she neared her conclusion, she revealed that her mother did indeed commit her life to Christ. She did so on her deathbed, and not at all the time or the that way Jill had expected and hoped for, but God took her home anyway. "You see," she said, closing her book and looking up at the students intimately, "If you take care of the things that are precious to God, He will take care of the things that are precious to you."

Today, I realized that I had dreams I didn't even know were dreams. I knew I had deep desires and hopes, but I had never called them dreams before, and I certainly hadn't died to them yet. I don't want them to die. I've held on to dreams because I feel like I'm perfectly justified in having them, and I want to keep my hope for as long as I possibly can. I've been longing for dreams I've had since before I can remember to come true, excusing myself by maintaining that hope is Biblical. Now I'm learning that I have to let them go first even if they could come true, because they're my dreams. They're not God's dreams for me, and they're not reality. As beautiful and wonderful as dreams can be, realizing the stability and truth of reality is always better in the end. All a dream does is deceive and put my hope in the dream itself, and not the One who chooses whether or not to fulfill it. And as blissful as dreams may seem, God knows that the beauty of His dawn is worth waking me from my dreams, because this dawn is infinitely better...and most importantly, it's real.