I distinctly remember living in a house in Antioch (East Nashville) during grad school. It was two or three o’clock in the morning. I woke up but could not move. I was completely paralyzed. The harder I tried, the worse it got. I tried moving my hands, they would not budge. I tried moving my legs, nothing. It felt like someone had placed invisible bags of cement upon every part of me except my face. Now, I understand that there’s a medical diagnosis for this: hypnopompic paralysis. Sleep experts tells us that the average person (I’ve never met an average person) will experience this paralysis at least once or twice in one’s life. What made this experience unusual for me is that during this temporary paralysis I heard a voice, not audibly, but a real voice saying, “Don’t doubt. Why do you doubt?”
There you are. This is as charismatic as I get.
I also should share with you the dream that Kara had several years back that spooked me. December of 2004—Kara and I had only been married a short time. We were living in Nashville but back in Michigan visiting our family for Christmas. During the middle of the night Kara awoke and told me she’d just had a dream about being in a strange land, in a building, with huge tidal waves coming over the building. She said she felt like it was so real it was actually happening. I listened, probably fell asleep I was listening so hard.
I rose early the next morning, a Sunday, to preach at a local church. On the way, I stopped at a convenience store to buy the local paper. Behind the counter was a television, set to CNN, covering the disastrous Tsunami that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve known Kara for almost ten years now. She’s had one dream the entire time I’ve known her about tidal waves and it happens to be the same time that the global village experienced loss and grief a hundred fold what we Americans experienced on September 11, 2001.
Some of you can relate. You’ve had dreams that feel more real than real life. You’ve had dreams that you were fighting in war and you woke up with a sore back from carrying such a heavy backpack. Or, you’ve had a dream in which a boyfriend or spouse betrayed in the worst way and your heart was still inside you though shattered into a million jagged pieces. Others of you can tell stories about recurring dreams that you’ve had since elementary school (1 out of 2 usually involves a clown but these are not dreams these are often nightmares). You know who you are. And there are more of you than most of you think.
Before you dismiss me , I would humbly remind you that dreams play a significant role in the lives of God’s servants in our holy scriptures. Dreams changed the life of the shadiest character in Genesis, Jacob. Dreams helped him to see himself for not only who he’d become but who God wanted him to be. Dreams got Joseph in trouble but they also gave Joseph an opportunity to move the cellar to the penthouse; from obscurity to the national stage (even if he was a bit arrogant about it). When God wanted communicate his most important message to a sorted, odd-couple regarding the entrance of the divine Jesus into the human plot, he did not send an official entourage, fax, memo, e-mail or Skype conference call. Nope, God sent a dream.
What I’m getting at is not necessarily dreams but what lies behind. What’s unseen is more real than what is seen? The spiritual world is just as vital to our experience of being human as the physical world that I can measure, memorize, and massage.
Acts contains an edict most of us would rather not listen to when Peter, quoting Joel, says your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams,” (Acts 2: 17).
Paul wrote, in the middle of one of his more well-known expositions on the power of love, “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known,” (I Cor. 13:8-13).
The writer of Hebrews claims, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for,” (Hebrews 11:1-2).
Jesus himself, speaking about the work of the Spirit, once told a preacher that, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,” (John 3:8).
Mystic Speak. It’s all over The Story.
Josh… Let’s talk about this on Tuesday when I see you and Kara for dinner. Over the last few weeks I have had the craziest dreams of my life. I also have a lot of apocalyptic dreams I could share with you too.
by courtney strahan (Jul 17 2010, 9:50 pm)