Recently (Two nights ago) I had some dreams which have really affected me:
Dreamlet one:
I was with a friend -- Jennifer Lopez-- and she had a date with or loved the actor or the character from Queen InHyun's Man (QIHM)-- and we were going swimming. I turned and saw that she had left her baby in the foyer asleep. I was worried about this and wanted to move the baby into a sleeping area where the baby would be safe from the neighbors and other folks in the house trampling on her accidentally. I imagined folks just walking into the foyer with laundry or hands full of stuff and not looking down and bingo, the baby gets stepped on. She said, "No, leave the baby there. People must be trained not to walk on it." I thought that was the backward way of looking at it. Shouldn't it be that the baby would be awake and the baby would learn to step aside out of harm's way?
Dreamlet two:
I dreamed I was on my front porch telling someone about a dream. I said, "I dreamed of two pennies on a plane." Then I corrected myself: "No, it was two cents!" Then in the dream I realized that whenever I debated anyone on facebook I usually ended the post with, "My 0.02." I woke up wondering if God was saying I should learn not to be argumentative with folks on facebook. There was just a feeling there that I am a very insightful person but I'm always using that insight...and perhaps I shouldn't.
Dreamlet three:
I got up in church to give a word. I forget the verse but it was about talking to God. I said, "We must learn to talk to God at all times. On earth we talk to him to heal us, to protect us, to give us money, to help us, to guide us. But in heaven we won't need him to heal us, to protect us, to give us money, to guide us...and what will we talk to him about then?" As I was speaking, the leader of the church started on other church business, not really ignoring me but going about some other matter while I was talking. I didn't think she was rude but I thought it was the wrong thing to do. When someone is talking about God, we should listen to all she/he has to say in stead of half-listening and moving on with one's own business?"
Dreamlet one:
I was with a friend -- Jennifer Lopez-- and she had a date with or loved the actor or the character from Queen InHyun's Man (QIHM)-- and we were going swimming. I turned and saw that she had left her baby in the foyer asleep. I was worried about this and wanted to move the baby into a sleeping area where the baby would be safe from the neighbors and other folks in the house trampling on her accidentally. I imagined folks just walking into the foyer with laundry or hands full of stuff and not looking down and bingo, the baby gets stepped on. She said, "No, leave the baby there. People must be trained not to walk on it." I thought that was the backward way of looking at it. Shouldn't it be that the baby would be awake and the baby would learn to step aside out of harm's way?
Dreamlet two:
I dreamed I was on my front porch telling someone about a dream. I said, "I dreamed of two pennies on a plane." Then I corrected myself: "No, it was two cents!" Then in the dream I realized that whenever I debated anyone on facebook I usually ended the post with, "My 0.02." I woke up wondering if God was saying I should learn not to be argumentative with folks on facebook. There was just a feeling there that I am a very insightful person but I'm always using that insight...and perhaps I shouldn't.
Dreamlet three:
I got up in church to give a word. I forget the verse but it was about talking to God. I said, "We must learn to talk to God at all times. On earth we talk to him to heal us, to protect us, to give us money, to help us, to guide us. But in heaven we won't need him to heal us, to protect us, to give us money, to guide us...and what will we talk to him about then?" As I was speaking, the leader of the church started on other church business, not really ignoring me but going about some other matter while I was talking. I didn't think she was rude but I thought it was the wrong thing to do. When someone is talking about God, we should listen to all she/he has to say in stead of half-listening and moving on with one's own business?"
Rose-Marie's (I won't link to her site just now) interpretation:
the first dream is about people expecting others to get out of their way--about expectations one has of people that will lead to harm because one didnt exercise common sense in what was precious to them. again, it was lopez's job to protect her baby, not try and teach others how to be responsible. she was looking out to try and fix things when she she should have been just protecting her baby.
the third one is good advice about not putting your 2 cents worth in. people dont want it, they wont listen to it, and it ends up in trouble. if people want to know they will ask, and then even then if its not what they want to hear they will reject it and sometimes you with it. :(
I dont know if youremember a long while back i had a dream the nite before
Tammy Bakker died about her and she was all shriveled and i was wheeling her in a wheal chair into a a conference and people were making fun of her and all of a sudden i could feel hard shards in my mouth and they were bits of razor blades broken off. and i said, "i thought all these were taken out" ....yikes!
i lose my cool a lot lately too so im trying to just retreat and keep quiet. we cant change people and i should just work on being the most like Jesus i can be and that takes a lot of work! :) Well, i think all we have is to work on ourselves, i dont think people are listening, for the most part, and all we can do is live in front of them --and therefore our lives will have to be righteous and
anyway, we want to live in peace so we have to get the crap out of us .:) there is just so much of it!
Perfectly true. God has called us to peace.
There is a lot of sneering by Christians about how other people behave. I hate sneering. Sneering is the thing i war against primarily. One Christian in a wheeled chair is sneering about how some flaky woman online is angry at her husband for not taking her to the lake. I understand that. I know the woman should not be raging at her husband because other people are suffering...and yet if I wished to I could sneer at the Christian woman who is sneering because although she herself is in a wheeled chair, she is not as ill or as poor or as suffering with a sick kid as I believe I am. In addition, she is mocking a woman in a wheel chair and all we have is the husband's viral video upload. Is it possible we aren't seeing everything that needs to be seen? Is it possible that even if the flaky lady at the lake is a total nutcase that we have not experienced her life and we would be more compassionate if we understood her woundedness and where the flakiness comes from? So, in life, what does this do? Lead to comparison and comparison. It leads to the idea that we "know" someone. So should we not sneer at all?
Same thing for a very smug pontificating Christian. We have so many pontificating christians online. They want to help fight evil and to correct the world but
A) if they happen to be right in the issue they are addressing -- because they are so sneery and so smug, I lose patience with them.
B) if they have muddled Christianity with their own racial or class issue -- there is no way to unmuddle them so why even challenge them
C) if they are wrong -- see above. And worse, then I become someone who challenges and sneers.
The dream is a good one for me because it is basically, i feel, God saying to get off that merry-go-round of Christian advising and Christian rebuttal and Christian sneering. I generally don't tell folks what to do in my offline life...so why venture into commentary and know-it-all ness in my online life?
If the problem is social, the Christian sneerer is too ingrained with his own class worldview to see. If the problem is personal, the Christian sneerer has too much pride and will not be enlightened. If the problem is spiritual, the Christian sneerer is so indoctrinated with his/her sense of denominationalism, church tradition, etc that talking to them and giving them my two cents is not gonna help. So the question remains: why argue when the listener will not hear?
On a personal level, I think God is saying that my career is my baby. Like Jennifer Lopez, Ms career woman. Should I destroy my future, my baby projects, my reputation among Christians (sneerers or not) by challenging folks just so they "learn a lesson about the path they're taking"?
I want to keep, maintain, and develop a loving heart. The trouble is..if one starts correcting -- even correcting folks who are sneerers-- one has fallen into judging others. Resisting the urge to comment on someone's judgmental post makes me fall back and resist judging itself. However wise I may be, however right I may be...I learn self-control and love by letting what I perceive as "judgment" go. So in resisting the urge to snap at someone who is judging, I resist judging. PLUS, I do not waste my breath. Because this is a complicated matter. The dream came to steer me from lack of love (when I am wrong by judging) but it also came to steer me toward peace (when I am right but the very act of commenting will ruin my reputation, waste time, waste my breath, and make me lose my own peace.)
Jesus brought us the gospel but the gospel battles the old Adam, the tendency in human hearts to be children of the knowledge of good and evil. We all have rules/standards/guidelines/measurements of etiquette, behavior, propriety, goodness, suffering -- this is the effect of living by the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I heard such a great definition of legalism: The feeling that somewhere someone is getting away with something. In this case, when someone says something sneering and judgmental and I have the perfect comeback/response to silent the person but I do NOT challenge them...I feel as if that person is getting away with something.
I didn't think I was legalistic but the more i think about it, the more i realize how i have disliked those who were healthy, those who didn't seem to have suffered as I have. And the Lord said to me: "Would you be happy if you heard a mafia hit man who had murdered 100 innocent people had yet another healthy grandchild? Would you be happy if you heard Zimmerman had a healthy child and won a million dollars? Would you be happy to hear that a rich millionaire won another million dollars even though you have no money? That is what i want you to do. To rejoice with those who rejoice, to weep with those who weep...and to push judgment and harshness from your heart."
I want to be able to see the crap folks write online or to hear the crap folks say in church or on the streets and to truly love folks however cruel their platitudes or judgments or wrong their doctrine. I want to be humble even towards the arrogant and the all-knowing and to say to myself: have a merciful kind heart. They may judge you but you must love them. Lord, have mercy on my soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment