Life on the Edge

I've written here before about dreams, and my theory that they are most often a conglomeration of little snippets of what's been happening in our lives, thrown together in a haphazard fashion by our brains as they sift and sort stuff while we're asleep.  I thought I'd share with you a recent example from my own dream life.

A couple of weeks ago I was helping a team of people who were preparing for a holiday club that took place in our church during the next week.

Service at the end of Holiday Club

To describe it as upheaval would be less than accurate. Chairs were all cleared from the main part of the church and most were stacked neatly by the side windows; some were arranged down the opposite side of the building into squares, and each square had two tables within it.  A gazebo had been erected just inside the main door, so everyone entering would have to pass through it.  Oh, and the pulpit was disguised as a space rocket.

On Thursday morning, as I drove along with my radio tuned in to listen to the opening moments of the fourth test match from Trent Bridge, I was so shocked that I completely missed my turning off the motorway.  This was upheaval of a different sort.  At that time on the first morning of a five-day match, the opening batsmen are usually settling themselves at the crease.  Not so on this occasion; the first six wickets fell within about half an hour, a performance that has since caused much media attention, and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

My weird dream on Thursday night/Friday morning could certainly be classified in the same league for its degree of upheaval. There was a cinema in a small village church.  Clearly the vicar had decided to 'do things differently'.  At first there were only two elderly people in the 'audience', but when others arrived and took seats in front of them, these two complained that they couldn't see, so moved to the front with their chairs.  Eventually, one of them decided that there was a draft, so he went home and got the quilt from his bed, which he then spread over his own knees and those of the woman next to him - not his wife - and began to share a box of chocolates with her.  And all this time, the film was running, so lots of people were missing bits of it!

At this point the events inside the church transformed into a cartoon strip, with a film canister laying on the floor bearing the bizarre - if biblical - title, 'The Whore and the Carpenter'.  Yet another transformation showed me a tabloid scandal with lurid headlines suggesting all sorts of misbehaviour ....

It must have been then that I awoke in predictable confusion, with a number of scripture texts half-recalled in my head.  I've since had the opportunity to make some sense of them.  One was a passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, where he described how he would vary his behaviour according to who he was teaching (I Cor. 9:20-22); "I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some." (v.22).

Another was a passage I had read earlier in the week in Galatians, where Paul seemed to be holding the opposite view (Gal. 2:11-12), and told of having accused Cephas (i.e. Peter) of doing this very same thing and adjusting what he did to suit who was present.

When things don't follow expected norms, we get excited.  We wonder who or what is behind it ... especially if the divergence from what is usual is great.  Sometimes, such changes are intentional, to teach some fundamental truth, or to make people think in different ways ... such as the holiday club, where 90-plus young children had a whale of a time learning about the stories of Daniel, and the underlying principle of trusting God.  Not everyone is in favour of such events ... especially in the church!  But let me throw in another of those texts I woke up with.  This time it was the words of Jesus, "Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" (Luke 12:51).

Jesus' message to the world was so powerful He knew it would be divisive.  So it is when we attempt to take it to people in the twenty-first century.  We may have to be outrageous to make any impact at all through the clamour of modern life.  We have to learn that to be outrageous for God is OK, even if it means shifting all the seats in the church, or installing a cinema.  What we have to be careful to avoid is outrage for its own sake.  Jesus caused division in His own age, for a purpose.  We must be sure that any division we foster is not only for a purpose, but for His purpose!