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Monday, December 24, 2007 For an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream Do you believe God speaks to us in dreams? Clearly the Biblical writers believed that God speaks in dreams. Dreams figure heavily in the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s gospel. In today’s passage an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, assuring him that he should indeed take Mary as his wife. He also learns that the child to be born to her is born of the Holy Spirit. Joseph wakes from this dream and obediently does what he heard God saying. Joseph takes Mary as his wife and when the child is born, Joseph names him “Jesus.” I also believe God speaks to us in dreams. An incident from our family’s life shows why. In January 1987 Jim and I went on a tour of the Holy Land with Bishop David Lawson. At that time, Bishop Lawson was taking all the ordained elders and their spouses to Israel/Jordan and we were privileged to go along that year. At this point, my pregnancy was just starting to become noticeable. One morning while staying in a hotel in Jerusalem, Bishop Lawson told us he had had a dream the night before about our unborn child. In the dream, Bishop Lawson, his wife Martha, Jim and I were walking down a dusty road in Africa. The time came for me to give birth, and the baby was born. Both Bishop Lawson and Jim lifted the baby up into the air and said words of blessing. There was dancing and singing, everyone celebrating the birth. I asked the Bishop if he knew if it was a boy or a girl. He said it wasn’t clear in the dream. In the fall of 1987, several months after our son Samuel Wesley was born, we invited Bishop Lawson to come to Jim Falls UMC (one of the churches Jim was then serving) and baptize our baby. That day the Bishop spoke again of that dream he’d had in Israel. This time he admitted that in the dream the child had been a boy. He hadn’t wanted to tell us this before the baby was born. The night upon which each child is born is a holy night. And tonight we anticipate the birth of that holy child Jesus. We give thanks for the mystery and wonder of a God who saves us and who comes so close to us that He speaks to us even in our dreams. Has God spoken to you in a dream in your life? Was it a night time dream or a day time dream? If that has happened to you, were you obedient as Joseph was to live out God’s dream for you? We remember with sadness the passing of David Lawson this year. David Lawson was one of the people who graciously invited me into the United Methodist fold from Unitarian Universalism. When our second son, Carl was born in 1990, we gave him the middle name of David partly after David Lawson, and partly after David MacPherson, a Unitarian Universalist colleague of mine. Marianne Cotter |
