From Cinderella, right?
What’s the next line?
“When you’re fast asleep…”
I looked at Saydee and said, “Is that really how the song
goes?”
“In dreams you will lose your
heartache, Whatever you wish for you keep… (Just make a wish, and it will all come true?) Have faith in your dreams and someday Your
rainbow will come smiling through…Don't let your heart be filled with sorrow
For all you know tomorrow The dream that you wish will come true.”
“So if I have a dream,” (I said to Saydee), “I’m just
supposed to make a wish, go to sleep, and hope that tomorrow when I wake up
everything will be fine?”
I thought about what Saydee said. It’s a little different
message than the one from Cinderella.
Cinderella is, of course, a movie by Walt Disney. It came out
in 1950 – 65 years ago, and five years before the opening of Disneyland.
As Saydee and I continued our walk around the park, I
thought: Walt Disney was a dreamer; but he did more than just sleep and hope
that, somehow, all his dreams would magically come true in the morning… he
worked hard, and he insisted that all those who worked for him worked hard. He
of all people should know that a dream requires hard work. Especially if your
dream is big: you need to get up early every morning, open the door, head
outside and take off running.
What is your dream? Are you laying around, hoping it will
come true on its own? Or do you get up and take off running, working hard every
day to make your dream a reality?
It is a dream of a new heaven and a new earth.
It is a dream of no more weeping or cries of distress.
It is a dream of every single person living in freedom, in
their own home, enjoying the wealth that they help create.
Isaiah 65 describes God’s dream like this: God’s dream is of
a world in which no one labors in vain. All those who work hard will benefit
from their work. The wealth they create won’t go to the 1% at the top. The
wealth they create will be shared by all in society, especially those who
helped create it. No one who works will live in poverty. “They shall not labor
in vain...”
God has promised to do God’s part in making the dream come
true. We heard today from Jeremiah: “I will fulfill the promise.” But God also
demands that we share in the work of making the dream come true.
How hard are you willing to work for your dream, for God’s
dream? Are you willing to chase after it, like Saydee; to wake up every
morning, head out the front door, and take off running?
In the book of Genesis there is a story about a young man
named Jacob. Jacob had a dream. I’m not talking about the dream he had when he
was sleeping one night using a rock for a pillow; I’m talking about a dream
that was with him night and day, a dream that wasn’t really all that different
from Cindrella’s dream.
Jacob went to Rachel’s father, as was the custom in those
days. Jacob knew he needed to offer Rachel’s father something in return for
Rachel’s hand in marriage.
So Jacob offered to work for him for seven years. Seven years
of labor, in exchange for the opportunity to marry Rachel and have his dream
come true.
That’s a long time, isn’t it? Seven years of work! What
happened to making a wish when you’re fast asleep, and having your dream come
true in the morning?
Yeah, that’s only in fairy tales.
Seven years. That was the plan, anyway. But you know,
sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan. There are delays, unexpected
circumstances, unforseen situations… sometimes it takes longer than we expect.
Haven’t you ever chased after a dream, worked hard to make it
happen, and got frustrated because it was taking longer than expected?
In Jacob’s case, seven years became fourteen years! He
thought he’d have to work seven years for his dream, and ended up working twice
that! (It’s quite an interesting story how that happened – you should read it
some time. It’s in Genesis chapter 29.)
Finally, after fourteen
years of hard work, Jacob married Rachel, and his dream came true.
Was it worth it? Jacob thought so.
One of the Bibles I own has an introduction to the book of
Jeremiah that says his dream was of a “new day when religion would be more than
a set of outward rules to be kept,” a day when faith would transform people’s
hearts and be lived out in their lives.
And how hard was Jeremiah willing to work for this dream? It
wasn’t easy. Dreams rarely do come true without great effort.
In the course of his work, Jeremiah was slandered,
imprisoned, and on one occasion, thrown into a deep mud pit by his enemies and
left to die. He sank in the mud; it was like quicksand.
He wanted to give up. After all, what’s the point? All his
hard work and what was the result? Stuck in a deep pit, sinking in the mud,
death all but certain.
At the last minute, he was rescued from the pit, and he went
right back to working toward the dream.
I bet Jacob – who worked 7 years for Rachel, and then 7 more
years – felt like he was stuck in a pit. I bet he felt like he was stuck with
no hope when he finished his seven years of hard work only to discover that he
had an additional seven years of hard work ahead of him. Would his dream ever
come true? Or would he be stuck in the mud forever?
But the dream was important to him – it was everything – and
he worked the extra seven years to make it come true.
The dream of the prophets was not fully realized in their
time. But the dream stayed alive. Hope remained. After all, God made a promise,
and assured the people that he would fulfill that promise.
According to Isaiah, when this dream is realized, there would
be good news for the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, freedom for the
captives, and comfort for all those who mourn.
When Jesus entered the synagogue in Nazareth and read this
passage from Isaiah, he knew that the work to make this dream a reality was his
work. He said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled.” It was fulfilled in him,
in the message he proclaimed, in the work he did.
And, it is fulfilled in us. The dream comes true when those
follow Christ work with God to make it real. As we anticipate the birth of
Christ and the realization of the dream, we work with God to make it happen. We
work to end oppression and discrimination. We work to end the economic
inequality that plagues our land. We work to end hateful speech directed
against refugees, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and others.
This is the dream expressed in the scriptures we read and the
songs we sing. This is what we hope for. This is what we pray for. This is what
we work for.
A note on the image of Jeremiah: this is the artwork of James C. Lewis. For more info:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/characters-from-bible-really-look-like-_n_5281519.html
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