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 Joel 2:28
My six-year-old grandson Nils, who lives in a suburb of Boston, went to see his first Major League baseball game this past summer when his father took him to see the Boston Red Sox play. Arriving home, he went right out to the backyard and set up his little T-ball set.
They didn't have T-ball when I was a kid, but surely you know what it is--a stand on a round base, on top of which you put a baseball. It helps little kids learn how to swing a bat and connect with the ball. So Nils began to swing. Every time he swung and hit the ball, in his mind's eyes he was hitting a massive home run.
Then he took the baseball and started pitching to an imaginary batter, pitch after pitch. Of course he struck out everybody he faced. It was a no-hit game, and in that moment he became the greatest baseball player ever to live. He was dreaming an impossible dream, and having a great time with it.
I remember when I was a little boy, I can't tell you how many times I hit a home run and won the game in the bottom of the ninth. Or I imagined myself on the football field, where in real life I was always too small to play. In my imagination I was so fast and clever that I could get around the opposing players. They couldn't hold onto me. And how many games I won!
What little Nils was doing that summer afternoon, and what I did as a young boy, is a very important part of the human growth process. Our little minds were very busy with big ideas, and we stretched the big ideas to encompass achieving something most people would say is impossible. Let me say: dreams matter.
Sometimes people will criticize others for lazy daydreaming, spinning around in a world of fantasy and never actually doing anything. I recognize their point, but regardless of these criticisms, dreams matter.
My wife Lea was born and raised in North Georgia. If you have driven through the rolling hills of the northern part of the state of Georgia you know that this is a beautiful part of the country. She lived deep in a very rural area. Even today, you can look from any side of her father's home and not see another house. They didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until she was nine years old.
In her mind's eye Lea saw beyond this little rural village to a great big beautiful world. She was determined that one day she would see it. If she had mentioned this to people in her area, they probably would have told her to tone down her expections. "Your daddy and mommy don't make much money. There isn't a chance that you are going to see the whole world."
There is a kind of person you don't want around you when you are nurturing a dream. I call them dream-busters. They speak with great authority about what is going on in another person's life? "You can't do that, don't waste your time, don't even try it." But no human being can know the possibilities residing deep within another mind and heart.
Lea kept her dream in her heart. After she finished college she got a job with TWA and, as soon as she could, she managed to transfer to New York. She may not have known it at the time, but she had moved into Dream City. New York City is made up of dreamers. For the last two hundred years, people from all over the world have been coming here with their dreams. Today, in this great city of New York, there are people from every nation in the entire world. They have not come here for the easy life--it is not easy in New York. It is a challenging place to live. Most come to live a dream.
Visitors often comment on the energy of New York. I believe this energy is created by the dreamers who come here to work toward their dreams. You have seen them when they are just starting. They drive the taxis, they work in hotels, they wait on tables in the restaurants. You see them waiting in lines for auditions. New York seems to be the center of just about every profession in the world?fashion, music, the arts, finance. As the Frank Sinatra song goes, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." There is some truth in that. I know this church today is filled with big dreamers.
It was to this exciting, challenging city that Lea came. Based in New York, she soon was flying far and wide. In just a few years she saw a good part of the world, and she was paid to do it. Her dream was not impossible after all, but it would have been if she had not held it in her heart and believed in it, and acted to make it a reality. You cannot tell another person what they can or cannot do. Guidance, perhaps, and encouragement are what they need from you.
Napoleon Hill, an inspirational writer and speaker of a recent generation, was a great encourager of dreams.
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Dreams matter.
Over the past few years a scriptural passage by the Old Testament prophet Joel has become more and more important and helpful to me. God says: "I will pour out my spirit onto all flesh. Your older people, they will dream dreams. Your young people, they will see visions." I like the idea--I can see it very clearly--of God's spirit pouring out onto all human flesh. We are being imbued, we are being saturated, with the divine. The divine energy--God, the Christ spirit--is in every one of us.
God gives us this energy, and there is an expectation with it?that we older people, we who qualify for Medicare, who can ride the subway and buses for half fare, who can get into the movies cheaper than anybody else, God expects us to keep dreaming. We must keep stretching and finding ways for the destiny inside us to be fulfilled, so we can continue to do something good with our lives. Regardless of how much time we have--a day, a year, ten or twenty years, whatever it is, we must keep dreaming. Then, when we lay our heads to rest at last, we die soaring with a big dream.
And the young people! God excites young people by giving them visions. The young are the visionaries. They have more time to do what needs to be done, and they dream the big dream, the impossible dream. The dreamers of impossible dreams create bridges to the possible. Think back in the beginning of your life, think back to the beginning of the last century, think back to the beginning of this church and all of the impossible dreams that have become possibilities and realities. Keep dreaming.
Once, after a sermon in which I had said Jesus was a dreamer, a woman called me and challenged me. "You can't talk about Jesus that way! You are making Him seem too human."
I believe Jesus was very, very human. As a child He experienced everything that all little boys experience. Coming into adulthood He experienced the same feelings and challenges we all experience. But Jesus was given a destiny. God's Spirit poured onto His flesh and planted within Him His destiny. He was to become the Messiah, and He grew into that.
I know He was a dreamer because of the one story we have about Him before He started His ministry at the age of thirty. When He was twelve His family, along with most of the people from Nazareth, made their annual trek to Jerusalem, which is about ninety miles, for the Passover celebration. They all walked together--friends and relatives from Nazareth. On the way home, on the second day, Jesus' mother and father realized that they hadn't seen Him for a day, and discovered He was not with the group.
They ran back to Jerusalem. After three days, they finally found Him in the Temple, deep in conversation with the priests. I think He was dreaming about what He would be when He grew up, when His life would be fulfilled in ministry. Perhaps He dreamed that He would be very persuasive, very magnetic, drawing big crowds to hear His stories and teachings.
Even in His thirties, after His ministry had begun, it seems He kept dreaming big dreams. He wanted to get His message across to as many people as possible.
Often when I talk to ministers' groups I will speak about Jesus as a dreamer. Many don't like the idea of Jesus' dreaming of great things. They will say, "I wasn't taught to be successful; I was taught to be faithful."
I will respond, "Yes, but you can be both faithful and successful. If you are faithful to your ingenuity and your creativity, if you are faithful to the best that is in you, you will be effective in getting the message out." Sometimes I will say, "You know, when Jesus preached to the five thousand, somebody had to count." When He was preparing to preach, as people were gathering together to hear Him, I imagine He would ask His disciples, "How's the crowd?"
Jesus has to have been a dreamer. If He had not, in His soul, in His heart, in His mind, had a dream of doing wonderful things for people, it never would have happened. Dreams matter.
Saint Paul, a brilliant, high-energy man, dreamed that Christianity would spread all around the Roman Empire, which was a big territory even by today's standards. I am sure that the smartest minds of the day would have said, "Paul, you're crazy. This band of people you are associating with--they may have energy and enthusiasm, but they are strange. This movement will never go anywhere." But the dream was in his mind, this impossible dream ... and we know the rest of the story.
Impossible dreams become bridges to possibilities. I often talk about Seeds of Peace. In these tumultuous times this organization represents a ray of hope. These wonderful idealistic dreamers need our support, and they need our belief in their mission.
As you may know, Seeds of Peace is the result of a dream in the mind and heart of the late John Wallach, a journalist who worked in the Middle East for many years. When he saw how hatred bred hatred, he began to dream of a way to break out of this deadly cycle of killing and revenge. Seeds of Peace grew out of his dream. He gathers 14- and 15-year-olds from all the Middle Eastern countries to a camp in Otisfield, Maine, for three weeks to engage in intense dialogue with each other and, over time, learn to trust each other.
A couple of years ago John called me. "Arthur, I've got lung cancer." Soon after that I heard he had died. I felt such a sense of loss, both because the world needs people like John, and because it felt as if somebody had smashed a dream. But I learned the dream hasn't been smashed after all. It was a big dream, an impossible dream, and it was big enough to stay alive.
John's wife Janet has continued the camp, helped by an enthusiastic staff and "Seeds" who have graduated and are now adults. Three times since John's death I have visited the Seeds of Peace camp during the summer. I am heartened when I watch kids who were raised as enemies communicating from their hearts with each other. Under the guidance of sensitive leader-ship, they participate in field exercises where they walk on a high wire, guided and steadied by someone they once would have considered an enemy. John Wallach's dream is alive and well, and all throughout the Middle East the Seeds are spreading his dream of peace and mutual respect.
Do you have an impossible dream? I hope it isn't something like winning the lottery. You are too big for that. The dream God has planted in you is not for something easy. It is the dream of taking God's plan for you and doing something very special with it.
I finish with the words of a famous song from Man of La Mancha. It carries an important message for all of us.
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.
This is my quest,
To follow that star?
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far...
And the world will be better for this...
To dream the impossible dream!
The dream meant for you is in you. Please remember that your dreams matter. As you engage your mind in the big idea and stretch it towards something impossible, you will find you are clearer and stronger. And you can be sure the world will be a better place for it. The world needs our impossible dreams.
Let us pray.
Lord, touch us, bring us out of ourselves, and challenge us to the bigness that You have put in us. Help us to stretch our minds and our hearts and our souls and our psyches by dreaming impossible dreams and giving it our best as we reach for that unreachable star. Help us, O Lord. AMEN |
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