What are your dreams?

I was the luckiest kid on earth when I started driving. My father helped me secure a 1965 mustang for my very first car. I loved it and I drove it right into the ground in that first year. A couple of years later, he let me have his 1969 Mach One mustang. It was a real muscle car. How many kids that you know have had two pretty cool cars before they turned 18 years old?

That was the end of my extravagance though. Soon poverty and college took over and I had to settle for more modest transportation. I owned an old Toyota Corolla and later an AMC Gremlin (with Denim seats!) After college I got married and we had a Chevy Vega Stationwagon and before finally purchasing our first new car, a Ford Escort.

Today I am far too practical to buy a "hot car". I just dream about owning one now and then. I have a friend who let me drive her Jaguar for a week. That was cool. I have other friends who let me sit on or in their wheels and that is about as close as I am ever going to get to actually having something like that. Bruce let me sit in his hummer and that was cool. My youngest brother made me sit on his Harley Davidson. When we were in San Diego I snuggled up to a Corvette and made believe that was going to be my ride to the mission field. Meanwhile in real life I drive around in my Toyota Corolla or the family minivan.

It is fun to dream and pretend and I am like a big kid in that regard. Yet, dreaming dreams and having visions is not just for kids. God calls all of us to look beyond our present circumstances and to look for the possibilities.

I like the quote from George Bernard Shaw, which was later used by Robert Kennedy, which says, "Some see things the way they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things that never were, and ask "Why not?" I believe God puts big dreams in our hearts. Our job is to live them and reach out and build a better world around us.

That is the charge to the church. We are to be people of vision. In the book of Proverbs we read, "Where there is no vision the people perish." We can never be content to simply exist. We must be reaching out with the transforming power of God to the world around us. To get back to the analogies of my cars, we cannot be content to drive around in a Ford Focus when God has a Mercedes Benz for us.

So go ahead and dream and then give God the glory.

Cal