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If there is one Old Testament account that is a must for every adult and child of faith it is the great Exodus epic which begins with Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat.
The entire saga is a pre-Christian primer in discernment preparing us for a God who in Jesus is available, personal, powerful, and eager to carry us through any captivity and challenge through death to resurrection.
As I ponder Joseph the dreamer beginning this great Old Testament adventure I’m thinking of Pope Francis’s recent book Let us Dream: The Path to a Better Future.
Francis begins his book referring to our contemporary context in these early years of the third Christian millennium convinced that the Covid pandemic is (as was Joseph being sold into slavery) a crisis that both challenges and changes us: “The basic rule of a crisis is that you don’t come out of it the same. If you get through it, you come out better or worse, but never the same.”
Such an ability to not only survive but to thrive through a difficult situation (and even a crisis) is the measure of human (and therefore of Christian) maturity.
While this thriving is a human desire, it is a divine achievement.
Francis often speaks of dreaming and discerning in the same paragraph: “when you lose the capacity to dream you lose the capacity to love and the energy to love is lost.”
Remembering this Old Testament Joseph, and Joseph the spouse of Mary Francis refects that neither settled for survival but both were dreamers aware that “dreams were considered a means by which God revealed Himself.”
While dreaming is usually considered a sleep-time activity, people of faith are also day-dreamers.
Now there’s a great Lenten penance – giving time to the divine activity of day-dreaming. This is a pretty-good definition of the contemplation that is the highest form of Christian prayer: day-dreaming with God.
The great thing about setting time for day-dreaming is that there is no programme, no right way and wrong way, it’s the ultimate in mind and heart relaxation. That’s why it’s such a good analogy.for prayer.
We are not in control.
God is.
While Jesus can break into our lives any place any time, when we set time to listen for the voice of Jesus letting our minds and hearts wander and wonder, Jesus doesn’t miss a chance to get through to us.
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Send your date and time to add to the list, and just turn up at at one of the advertised gatherings, just one hour, focussing on where we are encountering Christ.
CHRISTCHURCH
Monday 23 March 10.00am (& every Monday)
Moku cafe, Bush Inn Centre
Waimairi Road.
LOWER HUTT
Wed 26 March 10.30am
Invite from Catherine
Columbus Cafe in Mitre 10
25 Bouverie St, Petone.
How wonderful to know that God is so very present in those times we spend day dreaming about our deepest desires coming to fruit in our lives.
What is triggered is John Lennon… ‘Imagine’ “you may say I’m a dreamer…’ where the world lives as one..
“Imagine there’s no heaven; and no religion too; no hell below us, above us only sky.” That is not a reality I can or would like to imagine or live in. I much rather Fr John’s angle of day dreaming WITH God and under Jesus & the Holy Spirit’s direction. That is a life-giving, inspiring, exciting reality.
Day dreaming as a Lenten practice – now there is a novel idea! It would require us/me to switch off from all the other busy-ness of life and simply ‘be still and know….’ Even my daily ‘quiet times’ set aside for Bible reading, formal prayers, and even reading FFF take on a form of busy-ness, of ‘doing’ something. But, from experience, I know that when I do carve out time to simply BE in His presence, unique blessings flow, joy and gratitude rise, peace descends. Why do I not do that more often, every day. Yes, a good Lenten practice to cultivate.
I wonder if this is why God and the people in the Bible seem contemporary, whereas thinking about pharaohs and even Medieval people seems like a step back in time.