December 2, 2023
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Dream Dreams
by Melissa Wiginton
In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Peter recites these words from Joel on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit poured out. He establishes the new community with words that established the old.
Old men shall dream dreams. That doesn’t really make sense in a culture where the story goes: “If you dream it you can achieve it.” “A person without dreams is a person without ambition.” “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” Those sayings make me tired with all their striving, working, hitting it hard, and moving ahead. If that is what it means to dream, old people don’t have what it takes. They’re out.
I love Christianity for giving me an alternative story. In our poured-out-Spirit story, the older people shall dream dreams. It is a must for the whole. They’re in. Maybe they dream because they are free from what pins us down and pushes us ahead. Free to be and not to do. Maybe they are the ones who can dream the continuity from how it was to how it can be—even if they themselves cannot make it so. Maybe dreaming a dream for us all is sometimes enough to bring us alive.
“Christmas itself isn’t about getting what you want, or making sure you’re giving others what they want. To experience Christmas is to trust that God can do this thing again. God can again be born in me, in you, in this broken mess of a gorgeous world. ”
“God of promises, sometimes we wait generations for the dawn from on high; sometimes only years. We wait for justice and hope and light and kindness to mingle in the tangle of our days. And we age while we hope. So may we age and hope with tenderness and truth. Because you are tender and true even through we sometimes wonder. Amen”
