So I Had a Dream....

I was in this old grungy house and I was holding a severed human calf (yep, you read that correctly….the bottom portion of a human leg, but without the foot). It looked like a female leg (kind of looked like my leg). Here’s the gross part. I knew I was planning to munch on it as a snack or something. Then, I accidentally dropped the leg and it made this very loud boom when it smacked against the floor - like when someone drops a live mic on stage. The sound jarred me back to reality and it was only then that I felt embarrassed that I was planning to snack on this calf.

A few more things happened after that, but that was the gist of the dream. When I awoke, obviously startled by what I just experienced, I heard the words, “My bride is cannibalizing herself.”

Normally, I would immediately get up and type out a dream, but what I had seen was pretty gross, so I didn’t really want to. Then, I fell back asleep and dreamed that I needed to walk up this winding, outdoor staircase. The stair case was designed with certain portions missing. Thus, in order for me to ascend, I had to first hold the left railing (because the stairs had no protective barrier on the right side), and then as the stair case wound up, I had to hold the right railing because there was no protective barrier on the left side.

Once I carefully made my way to the top, I found myself in a spiritual mother’s kitchen who in real life is considered to be a woman of wisdom by many. While in the kitchen, I shared my initial dream with those who had gathered, plus the word the Lord had spoken to me afterwards.

When I awoke from the 2nd dream, I felt like the Lord was showing me the wisdom of being willing to use both the left and the right railings to ascend the stair case to visit Wisdom. (In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is portrayed as a woman.)

We are living in an extremely volatile political moment and it’s easy to view each other through the lens of ally vs. enemy, braggadocios victor vs. defeated foe. In fact, our favorite news pundits (including mine) reinforce those stereotypes. “The other,” whoever that is in our personal political landscape, is made to look stupid, whiny, evil, the “true” Nazi, etc.

My sisters and brothers, those who call ourselves by the Name of the One who suffered a brutal death on a cross for ALL of our sins and was raised to life just 3 days later - We need to stop cannibalizing ourselves. I believe we are moving beyond healthy debate and are now throwing verbal Molotov cocktails via our social media pulpits. Our tongues and typing fingers have become the “cat of 9 tails,” strips of leather embedded with bone and ceramic fragments to create the greatest gashes and carnage in our political opponents’ souls. When we vilify, we are no longer viewing each other through the lens of the imago dei, the image of God. This subtle, yet diabolical shift is a slippery slope that leads to maiming Christ’s own body. And remember what the Apostle John teaches in 1 John 3:15, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” That should give us all pause.

In no way am I saying we cannot dialog or make our voices heard. If you have followed me these last five years, you know that I have served the Civil Righteousness movement, a movement dedicated to reconciliation and restorative justice according to biblical principles. I believe in healthy discussion, loving our neighbors, even while standing up against injustice to the powers that be, whether that means leading protests, engaging in them, running for office yourself, or writing a myriad of letters to politicians with whom I vehemently disagreed.  

But you and I know, as the Body of Christ, we can and must do better.  Our division does not glorify Jesus, it maims His body.

In the first dream, God made sure that I was the one who was cannibalizing. So the repentance begins with me. After praying through the dreams, I believe the Lord also wanted me to share the dreams with a wider audience - hence this blog. To further confirm that I needed to share the dreams, when I opened my Bible this morning for my Old Testament study, I was at Jeremiah 19, which describes how the impending judgment of God on Judah and Jerusalem and “the stress of the siege” by their enemies would cause them to eat their own children and one another’s flesh. Wow. 

If you don’t feel the conviction of the Lord while reading this blog - praise God - maybe this word is not for you. If you do feel the Holy Ghost on my words, would you join me in repenting and choosing to pray for our political opposites instead of cursing them, dialoging instead of screaming, and choosing mercy instead of vengeance.

No matter how crazy things feel right now, God will make us one before His Son returns. Want to help “hasten the day?” Let’s live Jesus’ prayer from John 17, a prayer that he prayed during a Passover dinner with His disciples, which included a former tax collector, a political zealot, someone who was about to betray Him, and a future key leader who was about to deny him three times. Jesus understood our propensity for division and made sure His final prayer was for our oneness.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. John 17:20 - 23

Amen. Maranatha.