I have a big imagination, and I’m pretty sure that I passed down my “big dreamer mentality” to both of my boys. It doesn’t bother me; I just love to hear them talk about doing things that are unimaginable. Even if I think their ideas sound, you know, unbelievable, I still love to hear about their dreams. I mean, what little boy has never had the dream of becoming a professional athlete, a doctor, or even a race car driver? Dreaming is fun. It gives you a plan and excitement about the future.
When Holt first started school, he was infatuated with the school bus he rode from the middle school to the elementary school every morning and afternoon. All he wanted to do was be a school bus driver. He had a big plastic yellow school bus that he would play with. He would make a line with that big bus in the lead and about twenty other cars and trucks behind it. This long line usually traveled across our kitchen on most afternoons when Holt got home. He even made me write his bus number on the side of that plastic bus with a black marker. I must say, he used his imagination to make his dream come true the best he could as a five year old kid.
Like Holt, I like to dream. I bought five wish bracelets, for heaven’s sake, so you know I do! (By the way, I am still waiting for them to fall off.) This summer, as I have been waiting on my wishes, I have been dreaming again, too. Even though I’m way too old to think about becoming a professional athlete or changing professions, I still have some dreams that seem pretty major league to me. The scary part is that dreams and reality are on opposite ends of the spectrum. You can’t be a realist and a dreamer at the same time. You can dream for a minute, but when reality pops back in, “Poof!”, the dream vanishes out of sight. The only way, I believe, for a dream to become a reality is when that dream is planted in your thinking by God. Only God can change a crazy dream into a reality.
Being the dreamer that I am, I have had reality pop my balloon many times before. I have also braved the fear of speaking my dreams to people to only have them look at me with that, “Bless your heart” expression on their faces. It hurts when you feel that people think your ideas are foolish. But again I say, and firmly believe, if God gives you the dream, he can make it a reality no matter how impossible it sounds.
I’ve thought a lot about people in the Bible who may have looked crazy when God told them to do things. Take Noah, for example, have you ever wondered what people thought about him when word got out that he was building a huge boat? Noah certainly did not come up with the idea on his own to build an ark the length of one and a half football fields and four stories in height. The Bible says that “Noah walked with God,” so when Noah got that crazy idea, it was planted in his mind directly from God. The directions were very specific about how he was to build it, but have you ever wondered about all the details? How did Noah get all that wood for an ark so large? Did he worry about the money for all the materials it would take? Did he have space to build it? Did his wife and children try to discourage him from following the plan God had given him? Did his friends think he was crazy and look at him with that “Bless Noah’s heart, he has really lost it this time” expression on their faces?
He could probably hide the whole ark situation in the beginning, but there came a time when it was more than obvious that Noah was building a huge boat because a flood was coming. It was especially hard for people to understand what he was doing for two reasons. First, the Bible explains that the world was so full of evil at this time that no one except Noah’s family would even try to believe anything God said, and secondly, from what I have been told, rain had never fallen from the sky before the flood came. Up until the flood, God sent water up from the ground to keep the soil watered, so rain had never fallen from the sky. That made people think that Noah was even crazier when he warned them about water falling from the sky and covering the entire earth.
I bet Noah felt like the “lone believer” chasing a dream. He just had to have faced more adversity than we realize. I wonder if he ever felt discouraged during the process. The Bible tells us nothing about Noah’s discouragement, but it does talk about his obedience. Twice in Genesis the Bible says, “Noah did everything God commanded.” That is faith in action right there, and that is also how God changes a crazy dream into a reality. When we pray to God for guidance; when we are reading the Bible and seeking to do what he wants done through our lives, God will hear and respond. Sometimes it doesn’t come as quickly as we would like, but God will plant a seed of direction in our heart and mind. That seed often sprouts and looks to some like a crazy dream, but here is what we need to remember, if God planted it, there is nothing crazy about it! The reality of finances and logistics will somehow get worked out because God will provide. We just must be obedient despite the adversity. The people that doubt can watch from the sidelines because when we do like Noah and obey what God commands, an impossible, crazy dream becomes a miraculous reality. Then, we get to say what I sure hope Noah said when the rain started falling,…. “I told you so!”
To all the big dreamers out there, here is the advice I have learned from Noah: pray for guidance, listen to directions, and do what God commands. Leave the reality up to him, and in the end, give God all the credit for making your dream come true. Here at The Holt Rowland Foundation, we are going to continue praying for God to give us direction, and I promise, when God makes our crazy dreams into reality, you will be the first to hear about it.
