"... your old men shall dream dreams:" (from Acts 2:17)
I had a dream last night about a couple who were in the church I pastored in Framingham, Mass. They were a very nice couple. Since I don't have permission to use their names, I am going to give them the fictitious names of Joe and Donna. I don't think my dream actually has anything to do with the real Joe and Donna that I know. Rather, they were just characters in the dream, meant to illustrate a point. In the dream, I was at their home. Donna was out, and I was having a conversation with Joe. Joe was concerned that Donna was getting involved with members of a very dangerous cult. Donna is a very sweet, loving, innocent, and trusting person. Joe was concerned that while Donna loved these new friends she had made and fully trusted these new friends she had made, they may not be the wonderful people she believed them to be and that great harm could come to her. But, here's the "kicker": Joe, himself, had also started to become involved in a completely different cult. Joe did not see this as any problem, as he had a lot in common with the folks in the cult with which he was becoming involved, and in comparison to the cult in which Donna was enamored with, this cult was not really considered dangerous or life-threatening.
Wow!
I sensed trying to talk Joe out of involvement with "his" cult might not be the best course of action initially. Since "Donna's" cult was truly dangerous and could be life-threatening, I felt that's what I needed to focus on. While I was talking to Joe, Donna came home. She was smiling intensely. Her entire manner was one of being carefree, relaxed, happy, and at peace. I made brief pleasant conversation with her - just trying to set her at ease. I was both Joe and Donna's pastor. My job was not to turn them into enemies. My job was to be their friend, but also to get them thinking clearly and to see to it that each of them would get as far away from these cults as possible!
I woke up!
After about a half hour of pondering this dream while a radio was on in the background, I fell asleep again and had another dream. In this dream, I was at a school facility. I was outdoors, along with students, teachers, and parents. The building looked something like the building where I went to junior high in the late 1960s. The students were all elementary school aged - maybe grades K through 5. One mother there was someone I know. In real life she has a daughter, but in the dream she had a son. He was about age ten. If you've ever seen the film School of Rock, he looked like the boy in that movie who's an amazing guitarist. We were all outdoors because there had been some kind of an emergency. I don't think it was an active shooter or anything like that. I think more likely, it was a fire drill or false fire alarm or something like that. In the dream I'm not sure what my role was - maybe I was a teacher; I don't know. The boy who looked like the School of Rock kid was in a toy car. It looked like a toy car that maybe a three through seven-year-old might play with. It frankly looked a little too "babyish" for a ten-year-old; but he was in that toy car. The toy car looked remarkably like a toy 1953 Chevy. I was thinking, "Boy, here we are well into the twenty-first century and toy cars still look like cars of the fifties!" One thing that struck me as odd about this toy Chevy was that the driver's side headlight was not on the front of the car, but rather on the side front fender. "Who's stupid idea was that?" I wondered. Somehow, the "emergency" was ended, and we were all filing into the school building.
Suddenly, I woke up!
I've given these dreams a lot of thought. I think they do have significance and are likely from God. That first dream involving a Christian husband and wife gravitating toward different cults and me as a pastor trying to diffuse the situation, I think speaks to the state of many Christians today. I think of 2 Timothy 4:3-4 which says, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." There's a dearth of understanding the Bible, and of sound doctrine. People think they've "got it all together" but they don't! And in the dream, Joe thought "his" cult was fine. He was worried about Donna, but in fact both were in danger. I think a lot of pastors, especially older pastors, would say they fear the spiritual condition of a lot of the people to whom they minister. The second dream had to do with a school. I think that speaks of instruction. There was some "emergency" going on. In the dream, we were all rather passive about it, but it was an emergency. And what about the toy '53 Chevy? I think a lot of today's churches and pastors think they can use the methods of the past and everything will be fine. It won't! This is not 1953. The headlight was not even in front of the toy car. The kid wouldn't even "see" correctly. People are not being taught correctly - they don't "see" the spiritual dangers right in front of them. And the kid was using a toy which really was "babyish" for him. This reminds me of that passage in Hebrews chapter 5 which warns that Believers who should be mature in Christ are still on "milk" and can't handle sound doctrine.
There may well be a lot more to dreams than I've even considered so far!
What do you think?
