The Shadow of Your Wings

I sing for joy in the shadow of Your wings; my soul clings close to You ... Ps 63:7,8 JB

and a dream

flutterby | July 20, 2008 09:12

I am standing on a roadway, a wide dirt path heading up a hillside. People are coming up the hill, passing around me (as I am almost in the middle of the road) and trudging up the way. No one speaks to me or even acknowledges my being there other than to skirt around me. I know many of the folks passing by, including my own family. Some of the people are talking quietly together, some laughing softly. Others struggle with the burdens they are trying to haul up the hill. Some very intent, focused on the climb. As I look up the road and down, a straggly line of people as far as I can see. Almost all have a dull grey appearance and demeanor - as if there is no real joy or light in their ascent up the well trodden, dusty road.

Of my self I notice only that I have no baggage, I stand alone, in a circle that has been drawn in the dirt around my feet.

As I watch the passersby I feel no desire to join them. But neither do I want to stay where I am. I know that it is time for me, too, to move on with life. I notice a forested mountain rising behind me, the sun blinking through the canopy. (It must be fall there, because the leaves are beginning to change, orange and yellow - a mat of fallen leaf carpets the woodland floor. I can smell it - bright, rich, inviting. There is no path through the wood, but it is clear enough to trek through easily.) I instinctively know that were I to climb that mount I would eventually meet up with the road on the other side ...

I long to step out and onto the mountain side, weave my way through the trees, enjoy the splendor of the forest, the freedom, the climb.

This was a dream I had several weeks ago, while we were vacationing in the mountains of Arkansas. There are some parts of it that I understood clearly, whether within the scope of the dream itself or as I began to wake I can't say, but I knew that everyone else was “moving on with life.” I had just stopped at some point.

I know the point. Four years ago today. I didn’t realize when I began this little series that this last entry would fall on this particular day.* I am in wonder at the timing of it. I truly believe the Lord, in His great and gracious way, intended this and I am thankful …

 - Thankful that He has kept me tucked quietly and securely beneath His wing during this long season.

 - Thankful that He has wakened me with this dream.

 - Thankful that He has given me hope for a future and the knowledge that He has a plan for my life. (Jeremiah 29:11)

 - Thankful that He is beckoning me to “Come, follow …”

For the first time in many years I have a dream … a glimpse of something beyond this little circle in the dust, something other than that long dreary road. “And that has made all the difference.”

I am ready to “move on,” to climb that mountain, take the road less traveled, listening for the Voice of Truth, trusting that He will lead me - always, believing that, though I will falter, my desire to please Him does in fact please Him. (I love this thought!)

I know that He is ready too; waiting, watching for me, reaching for me - “into the realm of the unknown where Jesus is and He’s holding out His hand” - and in that sure knowledge I am unafraid.

“ … I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers ...” Deu 30:19,20

I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of Truth.

I choose Life.

 

 

* Andrea Brooke ~ August 14, 1990 - July 20, 2004 ... our sweet girl.

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