If Only Hopes & Dreams

Sometimes your hopes and dreams aren’t high enough.

Sometimes they don’t match up with what God thinks is your design and destiny. When that happens you’re likely to have friction and at least a little confusion. But what would you rather have? His vision for your life, or yours? There’s the rub.

When there is more chaos in my life than stability, sometimes I think crazy thoughts, like God’s vision is blurry…or perhaps He isn’t looking just now—I’m on my own. This morning I wonder if my neighbors think the same.

We live on a cul-de-sac—the perfect place for our girls to ride bikes, make chalk drawings and have water fights. And with all the snow this winter, even do some sledding, and they’re right in front of our home, within earshot. If you have to have a street in front of your house, go for a cul-de-sac. Yet strangely, out of seventeen houses on our street, six are for sale. Those of us who aren’t moving wonder if we’re missing something…like those getting out of town know something we don’t.

I do know that most of those families are disappointed. The homes they bought were part of a dream they had of how life would be great if only. They wondered about location, shopped the town, thought about paint and carpeting matching up with their furniture, dreamed about growing up together in the home, looked at schools and churches, and questioned over and over again if they were doing the right thing. Finally, they rolled the dice and planted on our street.

And now they’re uprooting. I wonder if they have any dream left, or any confidence in God’s ability to orchestrate their steps—especially if life isn’t bringing about their dream.

The longer I’ve lived the more I see that it isn’t where you live, but how. I think God’s in that, but I think the world around me isn’t. Concerning the dreams of life, all I see it offering is a way to get a dream house, a dream car, a dream babe, a dream vacation, and financial planning for the end of my dream life.

How does that match up with God’s plan for my life? Not well.

If God thinks I’m His son, if He thinks that He lives in me, and that I am now His workmanship, I seriously doubt He’s much into all that other stuff. I don’t mean He’s against it, but I think it’s far down His dreamy scale, really low on His if only hopes.

I want my dreams to match up with His design and destiny—that will make my life! I’m not sure what that will mean concerning the things and dreams of this world. In fact, wanting to fit with His design and destiny causes my flesh to offer worrisome what-ifs. But this morning I’m not living under the influence of the flesh, nor the dreams of this world.

I’m living to believe His thoughts about me are correct. And that opens up and changes everything about my if only hopes and dreams.