Life is a Highway

Exhilarating about describes it.

I wanted so badly to sink into sleep again and reclaim the heart-stopping hopefulness—the wonder filled awe that has been so absent from my life of late. But toddler was singing her “mommy-hi-mommy” good morning song and so I inhaled, hoping the details would retain their clarity till I could revisit the dream. And before you clear your throat and laugh nervously, believe this: I rarely dream, and I even more rarely put any stock in dreams.

A bit of background. My spiritual life has been slowly going stagnant. Hurts to admit it. A person can definitely get too busy and I’ve felt far away from Him for a while now. Can’t blame anyone but myself either.

So back to my dream the other night.

In it, I and several strangers were racing along the top edge of a cliff, with a canyon on one side and a barren, dust-filled desert on the other. Strangely, the air was brisk and sweet and my heart was flying in anticipation. It was as if we knew a weird premonition of the “rapture”. Like our jeep full of people were hurrying to meet Jesus. The Bible says He will come like a thief in the night and we all need to be ready should the sky fall to pieces with His trumpet-shout. Praise filled my dream, and urgency, and like a drum beat in the background the refrain from Days of Elijah kept hammering in my awareness. “There’s no God like Jehovah, There’s no God like Jehovah…” if you’ve heard that song, you know what I mean. It’s about the coming of Christ…the Jubilee…and it’s a soul-soaring experience just hearing it. And I’ve only heard the last part of it twice, in the car, on the way to church. A partial for you:

Still we are the voice in the desert, crying, prepare ye the way of the Lord!  (I just now went and found the lyrics online…hadn’t remembered the part about the desert!)

Behold He comes! Riding on the clouds!
Shining like the sun! At the trumpet call
Lift your voice! It’s the year of Jubilee!
And out of Zion‘s hill salvation comes! There’s no God like Jehovah!

So the feeling I was left with?

First, one of peace. When you are in a spiritual low as I’ve been…knowing God’s strength is there for my weakness/discouragement even when I’m trying to fly through life on nibbles from His word…it’s easy to imagine that my luke-warmness is absence of salvation. How could He put up with me and my Israelite-behavior? But my deadness fell off as I dreamed. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that exhilarated hope/assurance of Heaven. It took my breath away. Nothing mattered except Him. Shouldn’t life be that way?  Nothing matters but Jesus. And that assurance is there for us believers, even when we doubt.

Second, life is a narrow highway world with a chasm of danger on one side and barrenness on the other…and we are speeding along, distracted, not realizing how it could all be over in a trumpet blast. How many miles, how much dust lies behind us…choking the people in our wake? Choking us, leaving us bone-dry and weary, when we’re supposed to be preparing the way of the Lord…