The day I found my reason. Tabora, Tanzania.
I don’t hear much talk about dreams today. Do you?
We used to ask each other about what are dreams for the future were… what do you want to be when you grow up, what is your dream job, where would you like to live?
I daydreamed a lot. I wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau, a frenchman who invented the SCUBA apparatus and went on to become one of the foremost pioneers for protecting the oceans. I took classes and became a certified open water Scuba Diver before I had my drivers license and set off on an ill-fated attempt to earn a degree in Marine Biology that was halted by my learning disabilities, alcohol abuse, and a different plan from God.
I have been dreaming again at night… and I am finding myself in a place between then-and-now. God used dreams to speak to his people. He still does, so I pay attention.
I woke up this morning dreaming I was traveling alone in Tanzania headed to visit the people and cathedral where I was first ordained a priest. I had oddly enough started out in my old high school having lost my backpack after I had left it in a classroom where I had arrived too early. I slipped into a reoccurring theme of not knowing what my schedule was….
Next I was in an odd airport in an odd land…eating at a dusty roadside shack as I have so often… then inside a massive modern compound. I was trying to take it in because when I made my first trip to Tanzania the “Cathedral” was the size of a house and the land was field…
Then I slowly began to think of the people along the way. Dansen, who worked in the office and first taught me about deliverance ministry as I watched a girl float off the ground (literally)… Mama Edith who would exchange my dollars for schillings so I could buy mosquito nexts for pregnant woman in the villages, Mama N’Dugu, Samwellie, Mama Scholar, Emmanuel…. I could smell their skin.
I no longer dream of being Jaques. I dream of being more like Barnabus. The Bible records in Acts 11 that “He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith”…. and so many of my friends I have met along the way were too…
but it is hard work in the sowing to get to the reaping. There were no John Deere’s, just John’s ox if he was wealthy enough to own one. Then the angst of planting what you could have eaten as your stomach contorts in malnutrition spasms.. and the wait for the rain, and the worry of locusts and neighbors raiding you each spring to steal your crops that are life…
“Let us not become weary in doing good,
for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
. Galatians 6:9
and so with all these thoughts in my mind having been planted I believe from the Lord I was answering a question I did not even know I was asking… ….what did you plant and what are you hoping to harvest?
I have been planting the Kingdom of God, hoping to reap Heaven on Earth while I await the promised coming of King Jesus. What about you? What are you toiling for? What is taking up your time and energy and dreams?
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
Psalm 126