Since my knee replacement May 5th, I’ve been struggling to regain my morning Bible meditation and journaling time. Last Sunday, when I was leading worship at Bridgenorth United, my sermon/reflection was titled, “Dust on the Bible.” As you can imagine, my message was to remind my listeners of the wonder and value of reading the Bible every day, not only listening to it at church on a Sunday morning.
When I awoke on Monday morning my first thought was, I’ll sit down right now with my Bible. So, I picked up a book of Biblical reflections written for teens titled, “Trivia Twists Devotions.” The scripture for Monday was from Ephesians 3:20: “God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine, or guess or request in your wildest dreams! God does it, not by pushing us around, but by working within us, God’s Spirit, deeply and gently within us.” (The Message)
The reflection started with J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter story, and ended with Marilyn Bell, of Toronto, at age seventeen in 1955, the youngest person to swim the English Channel. The action suggested to teens was “Write down something that you would like to accomplish. Then ask God to work in your life to achieve God’s purposes.” I thought, too often we expect God to work to achieve OUR purposes. That’s an important difference.
As seniors, pain and illness can shrink our wildest dreams to daily survival. That scripture reminded me to dream, and dream big, again. As long as we have the privilege of living in this world, God has purposes for our lives. Our tasks will never be completed. We can dream beyond survival.
My wildest dream is that the message found in all of my books, “Each and every human being in this world is God’s precious child, to be accepted and loved.” would be heard and accepted all over the world. Will that mean I might write a “best seller,” like J. K. Rowling? Possibly but only if that is God ‘s purpose for my writing and preaching not mine.
This scripture passage tells me there is no limit to what GOD can achieve through you and me. Even though I may think I’m nearing the end of my life, the Bible reminds me that God doesn’t discriminate with age. Remember Abraham and Sarah. They gave up on their dream of having a child, but God didn’t.
We can dream that someday the whole world will understand our interconnectedness and give up the quest for power. We can dream of world peace. We can dream of the world working together to stop destroying our environment. We can dream of a world in which there is no hunger, homelessness or violence. With God we can dream. Even better, with God we can each take steps to accomplish these our wildest dreams.
Today’s Faith by Rev. Janet Stobie
