I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed this morning and found a link to a BBC article and video about an untouched, uncontacted, and thus unreached tribe of people deep in the Amazon. (You can watch the video above)
As I watched the video I thought, “Here’s a tribe of people living in huts, living in the jungle… spears… loincloths… hiding behind the trees as the airplane passes over… and I’m sitting at my desk in Georgia, tapped into a worldwide wireless network of information, randomly finding a video about them, pulling it up from some BBC hard drive thousands of miles away, watching it stream across a portable screen, and now passing on the privilege of watching their primitive life to the world with a few clicks and button-pushes. It’s not only impossible for them to know that I’m doing this, it’s impossible for them to conceive of a world where that would even be possible. They don’t know I’m doing it and they could never imagine it in a million years.”
If this tribe of people is 100% out of touch with the rest of humanity like this video states, it’s crazy to think what they don’t know about. This isn’t a blog about what they should or shouldn’t know, or who needs to go tell them about Jesus or anything like that. I was just simply struck by the vast distance that separates my worldview from theirs.
My life has allowed me to travel the world and I’ve seen some incredible things and experienced some impoverished cultures and people who lead primitive-lifestyles, but it’s nothing to this degree. I can go into huts in Africa and see people lying on straw mats, but they’re probably going to walk out the door on a cell phone. Teens in Asian villages don’t have computers or internet in their homes, but a walk down the street will get them to an internet cafe that instantly connects them back to me here in Georgia.
There’s a progression of knowledge that has allowed me to be here using this kind of technology. It’s impossible for a man or woman in a lost Amazon tribe to dream of a portable device that allows you to talk to and watch live video of loved ones who live hundreds of miles away because they don’t even know about radio waves, electricity, video, wires, batteries, plastic… That’s when I had this thought:
The revelation and understanding of the first thing had to come before the dream of the other could come into existence. The more revelation that you come into, the bigger the dreams you can dream.
That part applies to all of us. The more God reveals to me about who I am and who He is, the bigger the dreams I can imagine are possible. When humanity discovered and developed electricity, growth and technology exploded at a rapid rate. My dreams are growing and expanding at a rapid rate because God’s securing things in me about what I’m capable of, what I have access to as a daughter, how I’m loved and chosen by Him, and what’s not impossible when He’s involved.
That tribe in the Amazon can’t comprehend how I’m sitting here watching them stand in the jungle. They’ll need an encounter from the outside to experience any part of it, and to the tribe, that encounter will be miraculous, earth-shattering, and possibly utterly frightening.
I think that’s something I want to pray and ask God… “I’m ready to dream the things I can’t possibly even imagine or fathom. Bring the revelation I need to dream the bigger things. Come and let me encounter you in such a way that I’ve actually experienced the miraculous. Shake the very foundations of my current worldview with all you are, all you’re capable of, and all you desire for this earth and it’s people. Lord, I’m okay if you scare me with the possibilities that await me as I join with you in your endeavor to release the fullness of who you are to the world.”
What is God revealing to you that will expand your dreams? Are you willing to open up yourself to a divine encounter that could change everything? That’s what I’m thinking about today as I watch a video of a tribe of people deep in the jungle, uncontacted by the outside world. Who says there’s nothing good on Facebook? Ha!
