Deliverers and Dreams in the River

It was so real. I was 61 and pregnant. I’d done the test, it was positive. A tiny baby lived in me. All that was great. But I cried to the Lord, “I’ll be 81 when the baby is 20! I don’t have strength for a new baby. I can’t do this at my age.”

I had to come out of sleep and into consciousness for several minutes before I realized it was a dream. And impossible in the natural. The Lord had my attention, though. What was this new baby?

One thing I’ve learned about dreams. Babies aren’t always the wiggly human bundles of joy who spit up on us, give us joy and, for the most part, take over our lives. A baby may be an idea. Or an ability. It is anything in undeveloped form that carries life and potential to grow.

God is all about babies. In the book of Exodus when people cried out in pain, He proved that He heard them through the birth of a child. One who grew to become the very deliverer they needed.

Moses arrived in the middle of a culture of abuse, out of the womb of a slave. Mama protected him with all she had. She did whatever it took. Even when, for his protection, she gave him to another woman. It was sacrificial love because she understood the value of her child.

So how do we treat our new ideas, our gifts? The ones that live in us? Do we protect and nurture them? Do we make sacrifices, go against popular opinion, and do whatever it takes to see them grow up?

Often we discount their value. Someone shoots down a thought, a plan. What does it matter? It didn’t look like much, didn’t fit anywhere we could see, anyway.

Not so fast. That very idea may be a deliverer in baby form. One God planted, knowing one would be needed. One that needs us to protect, nurture and feed it.

God’s answer to human suffering begins with a baby. Something or someone we discount, unless we receive His eyes to see what can’t be seen. We recognize its value and choose unselfish love to steward what is precious.

There may be a wilderness season as that baby grows. Mistakes that propel it into the desert won’t kill it. The wilderness only defines its mission. It’s where the young promise meets a living God. One where God says, “Let My voice be heard through your voice. Let it speak to evil and capsize structures of tyranny. Let it set My people free.”

Right before being propelled into its greatest calling, the promise comes to a crossroad. It must choose obedience in the face of its biggest fear. “Me? Speak? To who?” It is a last-ditch effort to derail the deliverer. Before it changes the world.

You, me, we’re the deliverers. Our gifts and ideas are the something in us, perhaps in baby form. Protect and nurture the tiny and insignificant. Be comforted that mistakes aren’t strong enough to kill their potential and that a season of desert winds and isolation only clarifies their purpose.

God hears the cries. He answers with what He put in us. The baby we took care of when it didn’t look important, when no one else saw its value. That’s the one.

Shalom,

Laurel Thomas