Dreams and the Real World

Yesterday we hiked to Hanging Lake. It was a 1,000 foot elevation climb on a 1 mile trail. As we were just beginning the trail we heard a loud noise like a sheet opening in the wind. We looked up just in time to see an open parachute and 30 seconds later the guy was on the ground about 200 feet in front of us. We hiked right by him. Moments before he had done a free fall off the clift and opened his chute which we were able to see coming down over our heads. It was amazing. So was the lake and the water falls that we hiked to. When we arrived at the top there was something called the spouting rock. It was a water fall coming right out of the rock. It too was amazing. The whole hike and the parachute thing reminded me of a song from the Sound of Music. "Climb every mountain, forge every stream, follow every rainbow, till you find your dream." The cliffs, the water fall, the lake, the parachute guy all seemed like a dream. As you can see from the pictures it was an amazing place.

Oh if we could only live life in a dream world. But the truth is we all have to come down off the mountain out of the dream. That is the story of the disciples as they came down from the Mount of Transfiguration. Do you remember that Peter wanted to live up there with Jesus and Moses and Elijah. But they had to come down and when they did there was someone who was sick and needed healed. There were disciples there praying and believing God that little boy was going to be healed - and yet nothing happened. As I was reading that story this last week I thought how similar that is to the church. In the church we live in the real world where people need help. They need healed, they need restored, they need a touch from God. And just like in the story there are people praying and often we don't see the results that we are praying for. The story only ends well because Jesus showed up. In fact the story not only ended well - it kind of ended like a dream because everything worked out perfectly. The thought that comes to me through all this rambling is that while we can not live life in a dream world, we can experience the stuff that dreams are made out of if we come to the end of our self and wait for Jesus to show up. That is what the disciples did. They gave it their best shot and then they waited for Jesus to show up and He did and He will - if we will do the same. Truly Jesus is the stuff that dreams are made of. Keep trusting Him - He is faithful...