Sermon Cloud

In the Bible there are great metaphors of travel journeying...there is a place, there is a way to walk, there is a hope, there is a destination. 

Just this morning I was listening to an audio book version of the 2^nd most translated book in the world, second only to the Bible...it is called Pilgrim's Progress - you need to read it - it is about a journey, it is about life, it is about the good news of a man named Christian, who is burdened and finds his way to freedom and liberation.  He walks towards a different Kingdom.

We all want to be a people on the way somewhere...we all feel as if we are going somewhere...Where are you going?  How are you going to get there?  

These are questions that are rough, especially when you are just kicking out on your own...Many times in life what takes people somewhere is a vision, yes, even a dream.

When Martin Luther King Junior wanted to connect with the American Psyche in the cause of civil rights...he did not choose to say:

I have a proposition; I have a suggestion; I have an ideaI; I have an aspiration; I have a few sentences to share - No, He said, I have a Dream!!![1] 

A Dream is something that draws, pulls, inspires us.  Our culture has always been one built on dreams.  Every day dreams are fulfilled and dreams are shattered in our world.  We live in a day of marketing hype and media saturation.  There are Dreams of happiness and life satisfactions are peddled on every corner of society with multiple visions of success, status, and image daily flooding our lives.[2] 

We believe that we dream by nature of what we are created to be.  We believe that God calls us to care, to dream, to long for things in this life; but what sort of dreams would he have for us. 

[1] Martin Luther Jr. King, I Have a Dream(1963, accessed January 26 2006); available from http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/38.htm.

[2] To give us an idea of what a trillion dollar marketing expenditure is like the following may be helpful.  A trillion dollars is equivalent to the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Canada or Mexico.  Or the GDP of Hungary, New Zealand, Colombia, Pakistan, Chile, Philippines, Algeria, Egypt, and Romania combined.  - Source - "List of Countries by Gdp (Nominal)," in Wikipedia (2006). includes two GDP Statistics, one from the IMF and the other from the World bank.