Title:- Warnings & Wellness
Job 33:15,16 In a dream, in a vision of the night, When deep sleep falls upon men, While slumbering on their beds, Then He opens the ears of men, And seals their instruction.
You will forgive my often stated premise that “All poems of true love are in the end applicable to Jesus.” To this end then, let me now quote the opening and closing stanzas from the Victorian poet, Matthew Arnold, and his poem entitled, ‘Longing.’
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
If you are fortunate to sleep say seven hours a day and live for 70 years, then 178,360 hours will be spent asleep. That’s 7,432 days, 1,061 weeks, or just over 20 years! If you are overcome with panic at this point, don’t go rushing to set your alarm clock earlier, for sleep is important for a multitude of physical, intellectual and psychological reasons. It’s also important for spiritual reasons! I wonder then sometimes, if sleep is the only way that God gets time alone with some of us and gets His opportunity to speak to us?
Of course I’m talking about dreams. I know, I know, that dreams can be brought on by worry, or the subconscious working of the mind, or environment, or medication and sometimes even food and drink, however, God also speaks in dreams and maybe more often than we care to acknowledge. The Scriptures and excellent spiritual guidance from other saints, are the key to rightly guiding people in the interpreting and understanding of these things. Through the Holy Sprit and prayer we have the goods to do just this. It is one of my intentions, to at some point turn up at a psychic New Age fair and open up my own stall, inviting people to come and have their dreams interpreted. It’s not new, indeed, I heard Dr Mark Stibbe some years ago report at a conference, that he knew of Christians doing just that, even finding that God had gone before them in terms of 'prophetic evangelism' and had already been speaking to people in their dreams and so had set up the way for them to speak about Jesus! Interesting eh?
Me thinks that in dreams, God is interested in communication and especially in two primary forms of communication, those being: Warnings and Wellness.
It is evident that in the quiet of the night God often, when He has our fullest attention, warns of impending disaster and routes of escape. In addition to this, the Holy Spirit pursues His work of sanctification and under the blanket of sleep, raises problems of both the past and the present, bringing them to the surface of our muddled minds, either defusing the unexploded bombs, or cleaning up the mess of those that have already gone off and devastated our being. Maybe Arnold’s poem, can become our nightly prayer?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Listen:- And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that you can understand a dream, to interpret it.” So Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”
Pray:- Jesus, please be my dream maker, Holy Spirit my dream catcher and Great Father, my dream interpreter. Come to me in my dreams, and then, by day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay the hopeless longing of the day. Amen!
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