Dreaming of a World

Today's prayer prompt on the devotional cards we are using from Sanctified Art is the question "what is a dream you have for yourself, your church, or your world?" And our good news mantra for today is, "together, we can make a difference." The two together remind me that I often don't remember to include other people in my thinking about my dreams for myself, my church, or my world. But I still need to answer the question what is a dream I have for myself my church or my world. I suppose it's easier to start with the biggest one, the prayer for the world, which of course with all the wars going on it seems important to say I dream of peace, but I know that that also sounds cliche. I'm a trekkie a little bit and I think that we get a vision for the world in Star Trek because races are quite integrated, resources are quite effectively shared, and although we don't see what it's like for people on the fringes the impression given is that they don't have the same level of poverty that people experience in our world today.  So one of my dreams for our world is effectively shared resources and the cessation of all war. A dream I have for my church is that we would be a place where we are enjoying being together celebrating the ways that God is at work in our lives and helping one another similar to what we see in the Acts 2 Church. I can imagine the church where if you're creative you're able to express your creativity, if you're musical you're able to be musical, if you're concerned about a particular kind of Injustice you're able to get people to work with you to make a difference about that. Dreams for myself are a little more tricky because my world just changed dramatically in November and the first thing I think of about this prompt is that Rob dreamed for me to have a chance to be a pastor of a church where we had no qualms about ideology and I could say whatever I wanted. I don't know exactly what he imagined that would look like but I know that he did express a wish that we would get to a point or that I would get to a church that was entirely inclusive. I suppose I also dream of a church where we spend less time on meetings and maybe even less time on worship in a formal sense and more time on engaging one another and spiritual conversations and engaging our community, but I don't really know exactly what that looks like. Then it occurs to me that I have now answered the dream for myself with a dream for my church which cracks me up. Okay so dreams for myself are more complicated. And foggy and vague I suppose my perfect world is one in which I would be able to be with my kids and grandkids and parents and siblings (sibling - I only have one) regularly frequently and able to do music and art and preaching and teaching and maybe some architecturing or remodeling or I don't know... anyway there we go.

Thanks be to God.