I put on my boots and set out in the footsteps of the explorers of old, Lewis and Clark. There’s a trail and lookout point near my work where they stopped during their trek across America in search of the Pacific Ocean. There’s a wall of Lewis’ journal entries posted at the lookout point, I read each one. Some told of triumphs and others of hardships. Somewhere after traveling up the Missouri river Lewis realized that America was bigger than he expected, and the journey was harder than he imagined. I had a similar realization last September. It’s been a long, hard year.
It’s starting to get colder here and I can feel summer slipping away. Or maybe I’m wishing it away faster by lighting an apple cinnamon candle, drinking hot tea, and wearing my favorite sweater. Whatever the case, the season is about to change. I like that I’m living again in a place that has four seasons. It reminds me that just as nature shifts its seasonal course, I too have to change and that all my life I have been changing. I’ve come to realize that that is God’s way of doing life, we have to change. And I want to change. I hope I never stop changing.
I found this fallen tree out on the trail. When I saw it, it immediately brought to mind a dream I had a few years ago. In the dream, I saw myself sitting on a fallen tree, similar to this one, and behind me was the most magnificent view of a rainforest framed liked a window by the surrounding trees. I wasn’t looking out at the scenery though, something much more beautiful had captured my attention. From my spectator point of view of the dream His back was to me but I knew the person who I in the dream was looking at was Jesus. Because I couldn’t see His face, I focused on my own. and watched how I was interacting with Him. I don’t mean to sound vain, but I looked radiant -the way someone looks when they are in love. My eyes were lit up like fireworks in the night sky on the 4th of July. I could tell that I was so happy, so overjoyed. I don’t know what I was saying because it was as if the mute button of my mind was on, but I was talking, and I could tell that I was talking really fast –the way I do when I’m really excited about something. I saw myself place both my hands on my heart and then throw my arms open wide as if to say, “My heart is so full it's going to explode!” The dream ended there. It reoccurred a few times over the years, the same dream only in each dream the background scenery changed from a rainforest to mountains, a desert, and then the ocean. The dream was so vivid that when I awoke I felt as if I had experienced the ghost of those emotions. I could almost feel them by just seeing them. But I always wondered why I never saw His face.
I keep to myself a lot here at work. I eat alone, I usually work alone. I’m pretty quiet but I’m not anti-social, I’m just thinking about things. I haven’t really told anyone much about myself except that I’m from Phoenix and I spent a lot of time overseas. It didn’t get much more detailed than that but somehow, by simply saying I spent time overseas, word got around that I speak Spanish –which is true, but how they discovered that I have no clue. One of the workers that I hadn’t yet met returned from her week off and came up to me and point blank asked me, “You’re a Christian aren’t you?” I was a little taken aback by her forwardness. There was no introductory, “Hey, how are you, I heard your new, my name is so-and-so, are you a Christian?” I answered her squarely and said, “Yes, I am.” That was all she wanted to know and walked off. Over the next few days she began talking to me more, opening up about her life, and during that same week I did the same, sharing some of the struggles I have gone through. One day she started asking me questions about God, and so we had a casual conversation about Him. She told me at one point in her life she was a Christian, but she hadn’t been following Jesus for quite some time. Then she said something that stunned me. “You know why you’re here, right?” I looked at her suspiciously and she continued, “You’re here because of me. I prayed a few weeks ago and asked God to send me someone who I could talk about Him with. You are that person.” I stood there quietly taking in the weight of her words…And all I could say was, “He really loves you. And there’s nothing He won’t do to win you back.”
I think I understand now why I never could see His face in the dream. The radiance, the joy, the love that I saw on my own face was simply a reflection His. Paul wrote in his second letter to the church in Corinth that we are all being transformed into the image of Christ for His glory. We are all changing so that when people look at us, they only see Jesus. We are His hands and feet on this earth, we are one of the many ways that God chooses to show His face to the world. We are His image bearers.
For God does speak—now one way, now another—
though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on people
as they slumber in their beds,
Job 33:14-15
