Wednesday 22nd April Daily Message

Wednesday 22nd April Daily Message

Dear Reader

When did you last have a good dream, or perhaps a nightmare? Dreams are strange are they not? We find ourselves in strange situations and having the most outrageous conversation with all sorts of people in all sorts of places. We can be back at school, we can be stuck in a lift, the scenarios are endless.

Recurring dreams are apparently signs of tension and anxiety. I once had a minister friend who had this recurring and frequent dream on a Saturday night or in the early hours of Sunday morning. He told me about his dream and how in that dream he always found himself in his pulpit with no trousers on. In his dream, this was problematic enough but imagine the scene if real. This is the point, there is a reality all of its own in our dreams. They are so ‘real’. During the course of a day I have often asked myself, not loudly of course, ‘did I dream that or did that actually happen?’. And to be quite honest, sometimes I’m not sure.
My minister friend was a bit of a scatterbrain at times, untidy and very often unprepared. You could always tell on a Sunday morning. If it was available to him I’m sure he would, late on a Saturday night, login to ‘desperate preachers.com‘. Apparently, one such minister did in fact login in desperation and downloaded a prayer for use in the service the next day. It was a prayer of intercession. He didn’t have time to read over it so he just went to church as usual and discovered that as he was praying he was remembering and reciting a prayer for Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s loyal troops at the Siege of Mafeking.
Dreamers are to be found throughout the bible, eg Joseph, of technicolour fame, Mary and Joseph, Peter….. You can find others if you care to look them up.
The famous French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes in his ‘Discourse on Method’ deals with reality and dreams. How do we distinguish one from the other? eg How do you know that you are not dreaming as you read this? What are you doing and thinking right at this moment that you can’t also do in a dream? Do you get the idea and sense of the philosophical ‘problem’? Descartes sought to try and distinguish between reality and dreams and came up with his famous dictum, ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’.
You might think it easy to tell the difference but you wouldn’t manage easily and this was what occupied much philosophical and theological thought.
Solomon discovered he had had a dream, perhaps he was tense. He was young and had a big job in front of him and had his father’s reputation to live up to as well. In that dream, he was asked by God what he would like and God would grant. He asked for the most precious thing, wisdom, and it was given to him.
In the bible, there are many occasions and stories of people having dreams and visions where God reveals his mind. Latterly, God revealed himself not in a dream but in a person. Jesus Christ. The word becomes flesh and in John’s gospel he writes, ‘we have seen, we have heard, we have touched’. What are you dreaming about just now, are you awake or dreaming?
Today I ask you to think/meditate on these things.
God bless you!

Jim

JBoag@churchofscotland.org.uk

1 KINGS 3: 1-15

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.

Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honour—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”Then Solomon awoke—and he realized it had been a dream.

He returned to Jerusalem, stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then he gave a feast for all his court.

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