Invitation To Dream

Being guided to the New Song base in Chichigapa, Nicaragua

Where is your life going?

What maps are you using?

Whose advice do you hold onto the strongest?

Are you pursuing dreams? If not, what drives you?

For me, travel always brings these and similar questions to mind – as if to taunt me into dreaming bigger, reevaluating previous choices about my future, or even convincing myself to change life directions all-together.  I love and hate these questions: love, because I believe dreams are meant to be grown, matured and given fresh focus now and again; and hate, because in the midst of travel, there are few places that my thoughts can go besides the seemingly untrustworthy storage capacity of my own memory or, if I am wise enough in the moment, the notes section of my iPhone.  (Because what can someone really accomplish on a crowded eight hour chicken-bus ride when ideas for changing the world come to mind?)

Travel stirs these questions because in stepping away from what I know, I am forced into a place of contemplation and given a broadened view for consideration.  Silence and stillness can be so hard to bear.  Staying in motion has become the ultimate comfort for a large number of people, because whether they like the direction their life is taking or not, they can at least pretend, and in doing so, convince themselves that their busy lives surely must equate to forward progress! But sadly, I believe such movements keep us stagnant.  I am a huge encourager in the pursuit of dreams and the stirring of curiosity and new ideas.  As frightening as curiosity and uncertainty can appear to be, remember that life is not a math test waiting to pass or fail you when formulas and codes are forgotten – dreams are meant to be pursued, and talents exist to be cultivated. 

I do not have any secret formulas or a checklist of “to-do’s” that will bring dreams to life or cause them to grow, but I will write of what I see, and that being a world of inconsistencies that serves as home to a people that seek patterns and trails.  We often long for safe roads and rules that will hold us accountable enough to not fall too far left or right, as if safety were the overarching theme and goal of our universe.  But I would ask that we relearn our childhood curiosity and believe that maturity is found just as much in what we admit to not understand as it is to have an understanding in anything at all. 

Break away from the busyness of life and consider where it is that you desire to go.  Life’s possibilities are endless and your dreams were crafted with purpose by a Divine Visionary that loves to watch His children succeed and grow.  It may begin on scrap paper or a new Microsoft Word document; but the point is found in the process of halting, stepping back, and carefully considering what life you desire to live.  I do not know what you will or will not find – you may even confirm that your life is headed exactly where you have always hoped that it might! But if this blog serves for nothing more, I pray that it inspires you to dream.