“The God of Our Dreams”

The Reverend Thomas G. Steffen

17 August 2008

As Rich was reading the story of Joseph (from Grandmother Time Again, Judy Gattis), I thought of the saying: “A hammer shatters glass, but it forges iron.” Have you heard that saying? It makes a difference if we are shattersome or flexible. The salient truth that the Joseph story teaches us is that God gives dreams and that life has a way of preparing us for those dreams.

Joseph was just a boy when he had his first dream. He dreamed that he would become an important person, someone who would end up in charge of things and people. When he shared his dream with his brothers, the sparks started to fly. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming. Sometime later when he ended up in Egypt as the top servant for one of the king’s assistants, he had another dream. And later, when he was thrown into prison, falsely accused, he had another dream, this time the dream allowed him to foretell the future. And after his prison time, Joseph continued to dream and carefully guided the king so well that Joseph was made governor of Egypt. Think of it, Joseph, the dreamer, the one his brothers wanted to put away, the one who never stopped believing in his dreams regardless of the circumstances that contradicted them, ends up in a position to rescue his family from starvation.

Now it would be irresponsible for me to end this sermon by promising you that if you allow God to be God of your dreams and stay true to those dreams that you will end up a governor. The Joseph story is not meant to be marketed as a one size fits all. Of the two serious contenders for governor of our state, only one of them will end up in the Governor’s Mansion; one will win and one will lose. Life is filled with both winning and losing, and you’ll probably get your share of both.

And yet, the Joseph story is instructive for us because it speaks of a God who pledges to teach us about grace and mercy regardless of how many times we win or lose. And the lesson for today, for you and me and young William (who was baptized earlier in the service); let me offer one and leave the rest to your imagination. Here it is: We are as young as our dreams and as old as our cynicism. Our dreams are signs that we are alive; our cynicism a symptom that we are dying.

So whether you are less than a year old dreaming your first dreams, or 85 dreaming your 100^th dream, or somewhere in between, the question remains: Will you dare let God be the God of your dreams? And will you pledge anew on this day for dreaming that you will let God be God when circumstances go against your dreams? And then will you, will you let God be God when bad circumstances later turn into good ones?

James Russell Lowell put it this way: “Circumstances are like a knife. They can cut you, or you can cut into the future with them; it all depends on whether you take a hold of the blade or the handle. What do you say? Let’s take hold of the handle. Amen.

My thanks to Reva Allington, a friend and a member of St. Peter’s UMC, who edits my sermons.