Where’s Joseph when I need him?

October 17, 2008 | My Jottings

Are any of you gifted in dream interpretation, as Joseph, wrongly imprisoned in Egypt was?  I don’t often remember my dreams anymore, but this is what I dreamed right before I woke up this morning:

A former pastor of ours decided to start up a church again. In the midst of all the preparation he and his friends were involved in, he wrote a message to me on one piece of paper (I haven’t seen him in years and didn’t know him well, personally). He put it in an envelope and wrote on the outside of it: “A Scotsman Can’t Hurt a Scotsman”. A woman I am only just acquainted with delivered the envelope with the note inside to me. But the letter had been sealed in a thick plastic container similar to what you get electronics in these days – those molded, impossible-to-open packages that require a small chainsaw to cut through them. As I was trying to open this molded package with the letter inside, there were about fifty crickets scrambling around inside too. I kept pressing down on the crickets with my thumb (through the hard plastic), hoping to crush them all before I opened the package to get to the letter that had “A Scotsman Can’t Hurt a Scotsman” written by my former pastor on the outside. The crushed crickets made quite a juicy mess all over my envelope. When I finally got the package open and pulled the letter out, it was black and wet with cricket corpses. I opened the envelope and held the single sheet of paper by the corner and instantly dipped it in a liquid solution in a tray, similar to what a person in a darkroom developing a photograph does, and most of the cricket crunch washed off, but the ink of the message was running off too, due to the strength of the solution, I think. I quickly tried to open the folded note, and before I could read it, the acquaintance who delivered it to me announced that she already knew what it said. She casually remarked that the note inside the envelope that said “A Scotsman Can’t Hurt a Scotsman”, basically confirmed that I was so deeply flawed that no one knew what was wrong with me, and it was generally agreed that I couldn’t be fixed.

And that was the end of the dream. I got up, let the Schnauzers out, and started fixing breakfasts.

Now I know dreams often reveal what we’re internalizing, but I just don’t buy that I can’t be fixed. I happen to think I’m fixable. I know it’s a hard job and would take an expert, but I know Someone who can do it, and I’m sticking pretty close to Him these days.  🙂

“I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” 

                                                                                                         Jeremiah 32:27