Fri, Dec 14
... A dream is a wish your heart makes
We don't realize how much we affect each other spiritually. What one person does affects the rest of the church; affects the spiritual health of everyone else, even if they don't realize it. We were talking about the disintegration of Seven Days last year; about how hard and painful that was for all of us, and I totally believe that a big part of that was because of the crap and sin that each of us brought into the group. Not just the "normal" sin, because everyone struggles with that, but in that group of us, there were so many problems. So many of us were struggling with each other; with God; with other people. Coming into the Catacombs every Sunday night, we were basically giving Satan a piggyback into God's territory, and it was made worse because we weren't dealing with it. We were all ignoring it, all pretending that everything was fine, that we didn't have anything to worry about. And when someone did confront the issues, I think that more often than not, we pretended to be fine with it; pretended that we were reconciled with each other and with God without ever really fixing things.
It's only in retrospect that I can see some of these things, and I'm sure there are even more that are still hidden that I can't see yet, or maybe I'll never see them. I see how all of us had a hand in destroying something that was so beautiful and, I believe, something that God's hand and presence was totally on. I think that Satan got scared, and started to attack us more and more, and we weren't strong enough to resist; we weren't wise enough to call on God, and we paid for it. I think, honestly, that some of those things are things that we're still paying for. Friendships aren't the same as they were. In some ways they're better, but in some ways, they're harder, because we gave up what we were building.
Sometimes I wonder where we would have gone. Where would the God-dream of Seven Days have gone had we kept God as the center of it? Things we'll never know now. Things I think it'd be too sad to find out now.
A lot of dreams are like that, I think. I firmly believe that God plants dreams within us; dreams that we have to fulfill, because they're so much a part of our nature; as much a part of us as having brown hair or green eyes. And I think that those dreams are the most painful to have to give up on. They're the ones that, when, for some reason, they don't come true, we feel absolutely devastated, like some integral part of ourselves has been ripped out. I also think, though, that the most beautiful thing about them is that God will never completely take them away. He's the Master at redemption; why can't he redeem a broken dream? Especially one that he gave in the first place? And maybe, the redeemed dream will become more beautiful than the first one ever was.
infinite || abyss
posted at 12:45 a.m.
