I Have a Dream

“We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.  Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.  I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. 

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring  ….. We will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

Most of us recognize the speaker of these famous words, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  And many of us remember the event, the civil rights march on Washington DC on August 28, 1963, when Dr. King delivered these words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of over 200,000.

He held onto his dream, through years of opposition, beatings, time spent in jail, and he inspired countless numbers of others to catch his vision and share his dream.  It took years of struggle and eventually cost Dr. King his life, but today we can say that a significant portion of that dream has been realized.

What are your dreams?  A better job?  More financial security?  The restoration of a marriage or other family relationship?  To get your children through college?  To see a friend healed of a catastrophic illness?  To retire by age 55?  To find your ideal life partner?

What is happening to your dreams?  Are they being realized or just gradually fading away?  Have you lost hope because they now seem impossible?  Do your dreams need reviving?

We can all learn how to revive our dreams and keep them alive from Dr. King.  He gave us the answer when he quoted Isaiah 40: 4-5:  “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord

shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

Martin Luther King Jr. understood that his dream of social justice and racial equality was in harmony with God’s dream, and that God’s dream will surely be realized.  Did you know that God has a dream for all humanity and He wants to fulfill your dreams?

God stated His original dream for humanity in Genesis 1:26: “Let Us make humans in Our likeness and in Our image.  Let them subdue the earth and rule over all of it.”  His dream was that we would be happy and fulfilled in every way.  But we chose a different way that shut Him out and opened the door to every negative thing that we now dream to escape: poverty, boring toil, strife with others, sickness, fear and insecurity, loneliness etc.

But God was not willing to let His dream die.  He sent His Son Jesus Christ into this world and through His death and resurrection, God revived and restored His dream of us being in His image and ruling the earth.  He is offering to each of us the opportunity to join Him in His dream, and in doing so find all our dreams fulfilled!

Please come join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM to continue the discussion of God’s dream for us.  My sermon “Going from Glory to Glory” is Part 5 in our “Reformers’ Pledge” series.