Dreamers by Pastor Rick Neale

Are you a dreamer? Are you the sort of person who comes up with new ideas, who dreams up new contraptions, who thinks in terms of, “Wouldn’t it be great if ______________?”

Do you know a dreamer? Do you have a friend who thinks about possibilities, who comes up with grand schemes, who surprises you with an invitation to go out and do something you’ve never done before?

Just recently we read about a dream in the biblical saga of Sarah and Abraham. It had been several years since God had called them to pull up stakes (literally: they lived in tents!) and journey to a new land. God had promised them their offspring would be more numerous than the stars in the night sky. But, after all those years, they still had no children. The shadow of doubt came looming over their lives.

In Genesis 15 Abraham asked God about that, and God gave him a dream: a very strange dream about a smoking firepot and a flaming torch that somehow hovered over the animals Abraham had prepared for a sacrificial ritual. It is hard to attach particular meaning to these two objects, but the dream served one important purpose: to assure Abraham that God’s promise was still alive.

What God was saying through that dream is, Know this: You shall have a child. Know this: your descendants will be numberless as the stars. Know this for certain: Out of you and out of Sarah I will bring forth a people for my own, and through you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Abraham’s dream was generated by God’s dream: I will call you my chosen, my own children. I will bless you so that through you all my children will see how much I love you. I will bless you so that through you, all my children, my lost children, will see how much I love them.

What God was saying to Abraham and Sarah is, Don’t lose hope!

What IS a dream, after all? Isn’t it really about hope? Isn’t a dream something you long for? Isn’t a dream something very deep, very right, very difficult, but ultimately possible? Isn’t a dream something for which you hunger and thirst because it would be so good if it came true?

Dreams are a dare. They dare us to do something out of the ordinary. They dare us to look beyond our limits. They dare us to leave our safe places and step out into new adventures. They dare us, literally, to reach for the stars.

We are the stuff of God’s dreams. If we place ourselves into God’s hands, there is no telling what might happen next.

Together in Christ,
Rick Neale, Pastor