“A Christmas Dream” I want you to visualize 2 pounds of Hamburger, one gallon of milk, one dozen eggs and a loaf of wheat bread. Now, think about the joy of a newborn baby, a baby that is only one hour old. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful? You cannot help but take in all the intricate details of this tiny little form. Okay, now think about that same baby after it’s a few days old. You’ve experienced at least 16 episodes of extreme panic within the past 48 hours! All right, now imagine this same baby after two years! Some of this stuff is getting pretty old. By now, since you really have not slept in 24 months, the euphoria of that precious, new child has pretty much worn off. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of times of joy, but for the most part after having changed 4745 diapers (that’s 2 x 365 x 6.5) and picking up after the child 13,870 times (that’s 2 x 365 x every hour that you are awake during the day raising this child) that euphoria is gone! The joy of cooking has gone out with the dishwasher, we are not having fun! This reminds me of our walk with Christ. Remember when you first embraced Jesus? Can you relate to the pink cloud? The awe and wonder and majesty of God? All is right with the world because you are one with Jesus Christ. Ain’t nothing going to bring you down because you got Jesus! Remember that? Or maybe you are in that state of the walk already. Or maybe you never really had it. I believe it’s important. I believe God wants that to happen too. For a while. Not forever though. The apostle Paul likens this to giving milk to a newborn baby. But there comes a time when God takes away that pink cloud and says, “My child, it is time for you to grow up.” Now don’t go thinking that God leaves us during these times. God never leaves us, but just simply sends us out into the dark night of the soul. Did you visualize the 2 pounds of hamburger, one gallon of milk, one dozen eggs and the loaf of wheat bread that I asked you to? There was a famous monk a long time ago. Of course there have been famous monks a short time ago too, but I’m talking about John of the Cross from the 1500’s. He wrote a book called the Dark Night of the Soul. The book explains how God “works on our souls”1 during the painful and drear times of our lives. It’s when the pink cloud becomes old that he says begin to commit the seven sins of the misuse of spiritual consolation.” after pink cloud. Following are the 7 sins. Before we go on, this is meant to assist you in becoming aware of what is happening on your spiritual journey as well as offer hope to those in the dark night of the soul.
These 7 sins go back to our self centeredness. They go back to our desire to have our human wants and desires to be fulfilled. It’s our consumeristic make up. It’s human nature. We want God in our life to do things for us … All the time. It’s like continually asking our parents or spouses to do things for us. All the time. Please don’t get me wrong. The Bible repeatedly tells us that God wants us to come to God during the good and the bad times. God wants us to ask God for help. But God also wants to have a two-sided relationship. God sent Christ to simply to reunite us and to have a relationship with us. So what do we do? Sometimes we have to persevere and get through the dark night of the soul, other times we need to get with a friend and discuss one another’s spiritual gifts and keep them in check. We need to take an honest look at ourselves and watch out for the 7 sins. Because they can get in the way of the dream. The Christmas Dream. Joseph had a dream. He didn’t try to have a dream, it just happened. But he had to stop, lie down and go to sleep for a while before he could have a dream with God. It was in that dream that an angel of the Lord appeared. And the angel told Joseph to go against the norm, go against what is natural and human. The angel told him to stay with Mary, because something huge was going to happen. The Messiah was to come out of Mary. Two pounds of hamburger, one gallon of milk, one dozen eggs and a loaf of wheat bread. I couldn’t get help at the check out line one day because the clerk was extremely excited about catching somebody and that somebody was going to jail. All of the store employees were excited about this. There were slaps on the backs and high fives. They caught the perpetrator, a woman, and she was going to jail. Praise God I heard someone say. It was at that moment that I wondered about the little mouths that were hungry for the small amount of food. I don’t know what happened or how it happened. But I know folks were praising God that the thief was caught. I suddenly felt depressed. I felt raw. I could not get the shame of this mother out of my head, nor could I shake the vision of these children at home, waiting for their mommy to get back home and fix breakfast. I wished that the manager and the employees, and all the patrons could at that moment have a dream like Josephs and follow not our wise ways, but God’s. My Christmas Dream is that we would all be reunited with God. that we could drop our seven sins, that we would walk on the same road with Jesus Christ. My dream is that they would know we are Christians simply by our love. What is your dream? I challenge you to have a Christmas dream for the coming year, and to follow it. 1 Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, eds. Devotional Classics, Selected Reading for Individuals and Groups, (San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 34 as translated from John the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul. 2 Ibid, 36. |