Years ago, I had a dream. It was one of those vivid-remember-every-detail-when-you-wake-up kind. It began on a playground where crowds of people were playing. Children and adults milled everywhere. It was then that I saw it. A baby. Lying on the ground by the swing-set. It was ice cold and it didn’t move. I rushed to it and gathered the stiff body into my arms as fear spiraled through me.
Someone glanced over at me and said, “What are you doing with that doll?” I looked up, appalled, “It’s not a doll,” I said in a rush, “It’s a baby.” The girl just shrugged her shoulders and turned away. Person after person tried to tell me that the child wasn’t real and I clung to him, something burning deep that said he was.
“It’s a doll.”
“It’s not real.”
The voices echoed and I shut my ears tight.
I tried desperately to get him warm, wrapping him tight to myself and pressing my cheek against his frozen one. After what seemed a lifetime, the baby’s cheek grew warm. Color slid into his face and his eyelids fluttered. I sat right down, rocking him back and forth, crying and laughing.
I lifted my face heavenward and said, “Oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you.”
And God said, “That which is dead, that I bring to life, will never die.”
Years have passed since that dream danced through my night, but it still haunts me. The way I felt when death came to life, when God spoke.
I can’t help but feel that God really is wanting to bring to life those things that are bearing the stench of death.
In my everyday I encounter so much death. Death of dreams. Death of loved ones. Death of hopes. Death of ideals. Death, death, death. And I feel the shiver of the cold nothing-ness threatening to seep into my bones.
I know God created me for life, but I keep hearing the voices say, “It’s not real.”
So I tear open my Bible, fearful and tasting death, and God speaks. And I’m stunned right quiet at the words. Resurrection. Death comes to life. Restoration to the lost. Wholeness to broken pieces.
My dream may have just been a dream, but it still carried truth. For when God breathes life into dead things, they become what they were meant to be.
I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. I want to taste death come to life. I want to see the restoration of things gone. In eternity and in my daily life.
