I had a dream the other night. And in this dream, I found myself back home where I grew up. It was dark, and I was alone walking toward my house down a specific back road. It was the final street of the town, where houses and yards dotted one side and farmland and over grown brush ran the other.
A white dog suddenly appeared and began barking at me. Not a big dog, more medium sized. But it changed from being a poodle to some other short haired dog.
It was at this moment that a voice spoke to me, even though there was no person who appeared. The voice said to me, the dog is not a threat to you. He is warning you and protecting you.
I continued on my journey home. The white dog calmed down and began to follow. A short time later he began barking again. So I turned to look and in the shadows there was a dark grey wolf, the same size as the white dog. But the wolf did not fight. He did not growl. And he also proceeded to follow. Both dogs followed me all the way home. And as I reached home, darkness suddenly became light of day.
The dream reminded me of a Scripture- Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me….
The rod nudges sheep forward when it is time to move. The hooked staff pulls the sheep back. And this is how God works in our lives though we may not understand that God’s rod and staff is found in our every day lives.
Every happening, whether it be a setback, obstacle, the annoyance of a bird pecking on our window at 5am, a chance encounter with a stranger, losing a job, finding out we have a flat tire, even the betrayal of new friends or when old friiends fail to show up when we need them most… God uses everything to move us, stop us, guide us, help us, and to transform us.
For it is not by your power alone that you come into your full potential- it is by the Power of a loving Father who sees all things at once and knows exactly what you need in order to be safe and well, to heal and learn and grow. You are a child to God, a child of God, meant to mature into something wonderful that you don’t know or understand yet. Neither death nor Heaven is the end of the story. There is so much more.
God sees the Way forward for your life. And all God asks of us is to trust Him with all things that happen. The good and the bad.
That does not mean we will understand it. We may grieve and be angry for our losses. We may struggle with it, and fail to understand why we had to walk the path we were guided to walk. For we do stand in the valley of the shadow of death. And it will appear that we stand alone from time to time.
But trust means that we know in our hearts that no matter what happens, God is not finished moving yet. It means that when we fall, God will pick us up. It means that when we lose our way, God will search for us, find us, and bring us home. Because that is Who God Is.
YHWH, I Am, conscious awake and aware. And God Loves. God is Love. And Love, Real Love, is not a sentiment that changes based upon what others do to us or for us. That kind of human love is a feeling, which is fleeting. Real Love does not diminish in wrong doing or displeasure. It does not grow through pleasure and satiafaction.
Love is action. Love is movement. Love is quality, essence, an echo of that which makes the sound. And God makes the Sound that brings the world to life- The Word that God would have live and reign in our hearts.
Not lust, fear, rage, violence, selfishness, or unforgiveness.
Love.
There is a Native American saying, Feed the right wolf. It comes from a story about two wolves that live in our hearts. One wolf embodies chaos and destruction and all the qualities one might ascribe to sin. The other embodies all the qualities that sustains the existence of Life. Love.
The devourer can never make peace, only destroy life in order to feed itself. Always empty and searching for fulfillment.
Only one who fills their heart with Love, and comes to embody Love, can truly fill the void in their own hearts. And we call that Love, Living Waters. Because Love does not diminish. It grows. It multiplies. It comes to encompass all life, and all aspects of life. Only this person, transformed by the Holy Spirit, can make and keep the kind of peace with their fellow man that allows all people to coexist together. And by embodying it, reproduce it in the world at large. This is why God will not fail. Because Love, like God, cannot die. God, and Love, are eternal.