It made me think about my commitment to Christ. He was there to comfort me, protect me, and I had so often shied away from acknowledging Him to family and friends.
Most of my family and friends are not just "non-believers", but are actually hostile to Christianity. So it's one of those areas where we just "skirt" around the topic.
I couldn't quite do that this time. It was like a marriage, a unity, if you will, with Christ. He was protecting me, and I wanted to acknowledge and defend Him for that.
It was a watershed incident in many ways. It was a willingness to relinquish even family connections to acknowledge that Christ is real..... the metaphysical, metaphorical implications transcend the empirical world.
It was good. My heart is at peace. It became so distilled, so crystallized to me, Christ. A dream I had a few years ago began to take on new dimensions for me.
---Original Message-----
From: K Meyer
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 1:00 PM
To:
Subject: I forgot to tell you...
I forgot to tell you.
God visited me in my dreams last night. Transparent, disembodied, just a presence. I was standing on a hill, overlooking a chasm to the other side… and I thought, I want to get to the other side, even if it means trying to jump across knowing my chances are slim of making it. It was a brown hill, a California hill in summer like many of those we have hiked. In my dream, I decided to just do it…. To just jump and take whatever consequence came, for it was better than standing there in indecision. I could feel myself falling, could see the ground coming up and suspected I had not enough momentum to reach the other side, when I felt myself slowing down…. Felt my landing on the valley floor being buffeted to one that may leave me shaken, but generally unharmed. In my dream, I knew it was God who was protecting that fall, who slowed the descent. And when the danger had passed, I stood up and brushed myself off, looking around. He was gone. Injured, I was not certain I could make it out of the valley, for the paths ascended steeply, winding and twisting, and you know how I am about that. It was then I quickly chided myself, for who was I to question my own strengths and ability when He was watching and protecting. Even in my sleep.
It was a comforting dream. I try to hang onto that dream. I need to remember it. He came to me in my sleep.
I came to understand that climbing to the heights, walking those paths to the higher life, that at the root of it all lay a trust and belief in Christ, and the nurturing, safe valley floor has become to me a symbol of my church.
It's as my son said, which so few outside the Christian faith can understand. It's not that God asks you to give up and forfeit a way of life, or ideas, or sacrifice anyththing for Him. Simply, doing those things becomes the desire of your heart, an act of reciprocity, that we freely and joyfully choose to pursue.
