I suppose if you live long enough you turn seventy. It happened to me just a few weeks ago.It was a wonderful day of celebrating with my family. It was extra special, too, because I share my birth date with one of my grandchildren, Carson,-- April 29, just 57 years apart.
Being 70 I now feel a part of a group called, “the old men” in the book of Acts, who “dream dreams” (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28). I feel good about it, too. While the sons and daughters of the church prophesy, and the young men have visions, I am one who now gets to dream. By a grace I don’t understand or deserve, I am one of the multi-millions of people on whom the Holy Spirit has been poured.
“Pour.” I like that word. It has about it the image of being soaking wet. The Holy Spirit has been poured forth, on both men and women. Together they speak forth the holy Word of our holy God to a generation of people in desperate need of the holy.
Why the holy? I think it is because people are tired of the ramifications of the unholy -- greed, violence, anger, poverty, the daily bombardment of man’s inhumanity to man, lust for power, sex, and money, regardless of the innocent who are deeply damaged along the way.
Our world thrives on the unholy. The Bible informs us, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Of course, the world would disagree because the world is so busy being the world it can’t see beyond its own passions. It simply presses on in its narcissism, getting what it wants when it wants it regardless of the collateral damage left along the way.
The unholy is the normal state of being in a world patterned after self-centeredness, power and greed. N. T. Wright has a compelling paragraph that speaks into this issue. He write,
In the Western world, and many other parts as well, homes and families are tearing themselves apart. The gentle art of being gentle -- of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love -- have gone out of fashion. Ironically, everyone is demanding their “rights,” and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic “rights,” if we can put it like that: the “right,” or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn, and to flourish.
--Simply Christian, Why Christianity Makes
Sense,(HarperOne: New York, 2006), 8
Our old world needs some Godly prophesy, and Godly visions, and Godly dreams. God help us to catch His visions and dreams for His world. God help us to hear His truth.
Back in 1955 Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul” (From a letter written on September 6, 1955 to Betty Hester in “The American Reader”). I believe O’Connor was on to something. Also, I believe if it were true in 1955 how much more so in 2018. “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.”
Jesus has a great word for people who lived in His day and for people who live today. He said to hurting people,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV)
Because of the realities of life going on all around us and because of Jesus’ gracious invitation, I feel a strange and marvelous hope for all of us. Am I too optimistic? That’s a fair question. Let me just respond by saying , “I’m an old man now, and I get to dream dreams.”
I’ve seen a lot in our world over the past seventy years, a lot of which I wish were not true. However, as O'Connor writes again somewhere, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” One truth that does not change has set me free to live and move and have my being in the very life of God: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NASB).
So, move over John Lennon.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one(John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971)
Oh, by the way, unlike John Lennon, I do believe in heaven. I believe in the God who came to us to bring us peace. I believe Jesus died on the cross to put His broken world together again. I believe in love. I believe in hope. I believe in truth. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in peace. “You may say I’m a dreamer.” Well, I am an old man after all.
God bless you.
May God's Grace and Peace embrace you to His heart today.
