Porch Stories: God-Sized Dreams

I hope you'll read Kristin's short God-Sized Dreams Porch Stories as she details more surprises connected with their family. "God-Sized Dreams" is a challenging theological idea to blog (to teach or to preach), since God's acts as often is small discrete hidden ways as in big bold brazen ones.


As you take a retrospective glance over the past few months or years, you'll probably notice God has been at least as active at the micro-level in your own life, in your neighborhood / community and in your church as God has been enacting events worthy of billboard-size announcements along the freeway. The testimony of scripture and of everyone's every days reveal God's presence and activity as free, sometimes elusive, often at the level of "God even cares about that!" and full of frequently quiet, below the surface reassurances of God's ongoing presence, of the fact God has our back.

However, today's God-sized dreams topic asks us to consider the widest, highest, and deepest desires and needs of our friends and our families, our churches—of the nation we live in and love, of the irreplaceable planet God has called us to care for and steward; in brief, God on the macro-level! I especially love how Kristin's post today describes how her longing to become a parent and God's fulfillment of that dream by the not unusual route of adoption gradually branched out in a multitude of directions, touching, enhancing, and changing dozens, probably hundreds of lives (so far).

But too often we don't dare dare ask God or God's people round about us please to fulfill our heart's greatest longings, most urgent needs, most imaginative stirrings. Related to that, quite a few years ago a guest of a television psychologist said to the doc, "I'm not trying to act like a victim!" and the psychologist replied, "You're not acting like a victim at all; you're being the strong guy, but you need to demand more of others and more of yourself." I clearly remember the exchange because that's very much the way I tend to act, react, and interact. Oh, I'll easily identity people or events that have negatively affected me, but in general I want to claim agency and control, and I find asking other people or asking God for more than a trifling pittance far too threatening and frightening.

Tomorrow, June 08, is World Oceans Day. Theology of Creation or Ecological Theology is a recurring emphasis of this blog—I can't count the times I've written about water, often in response to events like Deepwater Horizon or to days like World Water Day or World Oceans Day. Water is life! Lively waterways and healthy drinking water are two of the deepest needs of our planet. Let's make healthy waters of every kind in every location one of our God-sized dreams! Let's dare ask God to help us make those dreams come true; let's risk reaching out to individuals and groups and asking them to do more of those small actions that add up to creating big changes.