Shattered dreams.

Many years ago, a female colleague, who was also a friend of mine suffered one of the cruellest blows to hopes and dreams that I have ever witnessed. We had all shared in her excitement when she became engaged to the “man of her dreams” and we continued to share in that excitement as she planned her wedding. 

She was the daughter of a farming family, and her future husband was the co-owner of a large sheep farm that needed the touch that only a graceful woman could bring to an otherwise all male establishment. We were saddened that, after her marriage, she would be moving to her husband's farm, and we would be loosing a wonderful and talented co-worker, but we were looking forward to the day of the wedding.

 

Just two days before the “big day” her fiancé left his farm to drive to the city where we all worked, and the wedding was due to take place. As he exited his farm driveway, his car was hit by a logging truck, and he was killed instantly. Forty or so years have come and gone, sadly her dream of finding happiness remains unfilled.

I have seen many others devastated when their dreams and hopes have been shattered, and I have often wondered if some of my own dreams and visions will ever be satisfied. Solomon knew this longing of the soul… he wrote “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 

 

I like the way the Message version of the Bible renders those words. “Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, but a sudden good break can turn life around.”   

 

The "tree of life" referred to in this verse is a probable reference to the "tree of life" in the Garden of Eden. Such a tree would certainly give much pleasure, just as a fulfilled dream or Godly desire would lift us beyond the ordinary.

When our dreams and visions wither and eventually die, and we are left facing a relentless tide of monotony, when even God’s voice seems elusive, we can very easily be left wondering if God is particularly interested in our circumstances. 

More-often-than-not, it’s not our actual physical conditions that bother us so much, rather it’s what they represent. Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people perish… The Hebrew word for vision is chazon (pronounced khaw-zone') and it means dream or revelation… without a dream or goal we tend to become unmovable objects, unwilling to step out or move forward. While this proverb generally applies to us a body of believers; that is to say, without a prophetic revelation of God’s direction, the Body of Christ tends to flounder about, this proverb applies equally to us as individuals.

One of the most life-threatening things that we are ever likely to do as believers is to  consider a future  without our deepest held convictions about who we are as Christians; a future where our secret dreams and goals have simply evaporated, or worse still, have been allowed to die.

It’s often at such times that God seems distant, yet He knows that we go through (and allows us to) tests and trials of our faith.  We find it difficult to hear His voice, yet we know that we must hold fast to those things we know to be true. During these times we must, like a disoriented pilot, fly by “dead reckoning” until we again come to terrain that we are familiar with. The ability to fly by instruments alone is crucial for any pilot, and we too must develop the skill of relying on God’s “instruments” when we are disoriented by life’s circumstances, or we are “vision-less”

At such times it’s difficult to see God... true we might see manifestations of Him everywhere, yet we cannot see Him. We might yearn to replace our God inspired visions with temporal things, but God created us for eternity, and He is ever willing us to look heavenward, and not be earthbound.