Dreaming Big

Where there is no vision, the people perish:

    - Proverbs 29:18a

   I don't know about you, but I always loved the beginning of a new school year! 

   Buying new notebooks with crisp, white pages...

               new pencils, with their tiny sharp points, and perfectly round erasers...

                      new backpacks, and binders, and rulers, 

                           and new visions of completed homework assignments with A+'s gracing the top. 

   I guess the last part was really my favorite. I loved dreaming about being more organized and more studious. I loved imagining all of the wonderful grades I would make, and how pretty I would make my handwriting when I wrote in those lovely, new notebooks. Of course I knew that it wouldn't last past the first month, maybe two, but -oh!- it was so much fun to dream. 

   And that's the way I am with the start of the New Year. I love plotting and planning how I will be better, more organized, more studious. Kinder, braver, stronger, sweeter. 

   At the start of a New Year, I can do anything, and be anything, never-mind that it won't last, it's really the dreaming that counts.                   

   As, I've gotten older, instead of becoming smaller and more 'sensible', my dreams have become bigger. Not bigger as in wilder, or crazier; but grander, and truer, and more meaningful. You see, I've learned a secret about New Year's resolutions. A wonderful, earth-shaking secret. Would you like me to tell you?

   I'm not alone! 

   That it! That is my secret! I am not alone in this arena of big dreams for my life, nor am I alone in the walking out of them. Jesus is with me every step of the way!

    And do you want to know another secret? His dreams for me, are bigger than my dreams for me.

   You see, while my New Years Resolutions list was still somewhere between, "get a better tan" and "read my Bible more", He was already setting into motion His own eternal, Gospel-centered plans for my life.

 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts

nor are your ways my ways,"

says the Lord.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are my ways higher than your ways,

And my thoughts than your thoughts." 

-Isaiah 55:8-9

and again:

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,"

says the Lord,

"Thoughts of peace, and not of evil,

to give you a future and a hope."

-Jeremiah 29:11

   Isn't this incredible? I want to leave you with these verses and thoughts for today, but in the next few days, I hope to be exploring with you, how to dreams God's dreams with Him, and how to rely on His strength to follow through.