Teamwork

We were faltering...with this quandary of trying to figure out how You are working. You send us out blind, and this taxes our faith; nevertheless You are kind and reassure us in that same faith. Our dreams and our lives and Your word blend like colors chosen to give a depth to the dark places and a glow to the light places. Layer on layer You paint: first one through Scott, then one through me, one where we are mixed...

Three nights ago, I dreamed a circular channel of water flowed, but an obstacle blocked the channel, so the water miraculously made a leap, arcing over the stony log and continuing on its course.
Two nights ago you dreamed you were on a small boat floating on a lake under a night sky. The dream was a dream of profound peace and security. And as the waves lapped against the boat, you heard a strange noise...in time you realized it was the waves speaking to you. And the waves were the voice of God. He said many things, but the one audibly recognizable thing You heard was "I know you." And in His knowing us, all obstacles were rendered inconsequential in their power to harm us.

And yet, yesterday, we anguished over these things. Despite the reassuring dreams, we struggled. We sighed. We searched the ends--the back wall in the corridor of our faith. And that is as it should be.

By nightfall, we were drained and exhausted. We retired to our room upstairs, you to the shower and me to the window, for a storm was brewing. I knelt by the low window beside our bed, opened the window and pressed my face against the screen. The wind was strong...so strong that I closed my eyes and remembered. It was strong enough to remind me of a dream of my own.

In that dream, I was part of a drama that played in a large old gymnasium, one of those old gyms that had bleachers surrounding the floor, bleachers elevated about 8 feet, making the floor inaccessible from them. The gym was dark--pitch black--but on the floor were strange fluorescent objects, mounds of fuzzy light, it seemed. These were in fact the only light, but it was like foxfire...a light reserved for the objects alone and not to share with their environment. They were of many colors, but strange, unworldly and unsettling. I had a part in the "performance" playing in that gym. My cue came. When it did, I knew my part: I was to grab a rope, a very long rope anchored so far above that I could not see its source, but I did not mistrust its security. As I held the rope, I began to swing back and forth across the gym, bouncing in and out of every corner, all this being done before a cloud of invisible witnesses in the dark. And as I was swinging, I heard the wind. An electrifying wind. A powerful wind. A wind that makes the wind of this world have a purpose: that of bearing Its image.
The wind in the trees outside was portraying that wind fairly well. It moved through the trees, and I realized it was the trees that gave this storm-wind the opportunity to imitate the sound of the great dream-wind. Each leaf spoke as it moved and scraped against its brothers. Each branch creaked as it bowed to the power of the wind. And with a wind strong enough to set the whole tree alive and bending, the sound of its submission gave the power of the wind a voice like that of the dream. I assume these same things are true of the voice in the water for Scott. You hear things in these voices that are very different from what words can give you.

Anyway, as I knelt there pressing my face against the screen to enjoy the memory of that dream...I felt something hit my forehead. I pulled back, and there stuck in the screen was a dragonfly. I studied its lifeless form a moment. Finally, I flicked the screen and set it free. It fell away. I don't know whether the wind's force driving it to me killed it or merely stunned it. I don't really want to know whether I required the kiss of death from it or not.

But when I woke this morning, something about the fact that You seal Your people on the forehead was rattling around in my first-waking brain. I looked it up in a concordance. I found two things that tie us together in all these things, my love...me for being sealed; you for what He said to you. Us for both.

• 2 Timothy 2:19: "Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are His.' " (And He told you through the water-words, 'I know you.')
• Ezekiel 9:4: In a vision, the prophet observes the day when God determines that it is time to judge idolatry (the act of placing the things created above the creator.) So He calls a man in linen (the garment of a priest) who has an inkhorn, "...and the Lord said to him, 'Go throughout the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over the abominations that are done within it.' " Following the sealing, 6 other men who are armed for warfare are sent to slay the ones not marked. "...but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary. So they began with the elders who were before the temple."

And so, here we are: consecrated, baptized, sealed. I saw the other two ahead of time. I didn't even know to look for the seal, but I am thankful to have been told it happened after the fact. Maybe that is as it should be. To be sealed unwittingly means receiving it without purposely working for it, and that is the nature of this particular seal, isn't it? (Like the girl with the secret admirer I joked about in the blog Lost in Translation.) But now, we are free. We can move forward with this reassurance. We are sealed and called Known by Him. Now, whatever He may ask of us, we are protected as we do His work.

Finally, we should remember that this word came to us through our united perceptions. Neither of us alone would have got the complete picture. We are united in flesh through the children we have, but we are united in other ways, too. (smile)

Happy Father's Day, my dear.