Looking at just one day will show us what we truly value

Even though our dreams are often beyond our awareness, we all have guiding images which lead us. These are with us all our lives, shaping and directing us, and giving our everyday life substance. These are very necessary, as with no defining images our lives will become more and more fragmented. Since we can so easily fool ourselves, it is useful to imagine being an observer of one day of our lives. By doing this we will soon see what we are investing the bulk of our time on. Through what we do we can understand what we value the most, what we are giving ourselves up for. Through looking at one small sample of our existence, we can realise what’s guiding us through it and causing us to make the choices we do.

Not everyone wants to see this reality though. If our dreams are too flimsy, this process of realising what we are truly living for can feel too difficult. We may not want to update a dream we had at 30 that may now no longer be appropriate, but our dreams do need to be renovated to remain life-giving. It may mean that our false dreams need to die, and that we need to let go of our cynicism and doubt. We may have used illusions in order to escape or neutralise reality, and so find ourselves resisting letting go of them. In looking over our lives we may well see dreams that haven’t been fulfilled and need to be mourned. It may feel like a lot has had to go, but in God nothing is wasted. So, even what we’ve learnt in ‘dead ends’ adds to the skills we’ve developed. We have then learnt what to avoid as we sense our way forward, ‘No, not that…there’s something here though’.

Sure, some seed of dreams planted in us over time will die. God, though, has a big dream for each person, a great longing for us to be in right relationships. He dreams that the seed He’s planted will multiply a hundredfold in us, that we’ll be part of life-giving communities in which we can risk bringing His light and love.