icy fruit

This morning I awoke with a start and slid to my knees.

I had a dream. One that started rather pleasantly actually...

I was sitting at a picnic table with my brother and my sister, and we were eating some sort of fabulous and novel fruity ice dessert. It was sweet but not too, and cold, but not painfully or sharply cold, tender but with a bit of crispness... actually, it was completely indescribable, but very good. It's a bit weird that we were eating these cold desserts because it was wintery. Very wintery. Snow and ice all around. And I wasn't sharing my dessert. In fact there was more fruit on the table and I was hoarding it. Snow kept falling on it and I was getting mad and trying to shield it, polish off this fruit (which actually looked a bit like tomatoes, but it didn't taste tomato-y). I got mad enough that I stood up to shield the fruit with my body, and then the snowy ice beneath us shook and cracked open and my brother was swallowed and I couldn't do anything to help him. I couldn't save him. I couldn't even see him.

That was my dream. But it made me think about what has been going on in my life. About how these last few weeks I have been so self centered, thinking about moving and traveling and what should I be doing and what do I want.

My purpose here is not my job, as much as I love my job. And my purpose here is not to have fun or adventures although that does happen to be a bonus that comes with a life of following God.

My purpose is to tell the truth, to tell people about the wonderful love of the good God who made a way for us to have relationship with Him. And my desire is to see those that don't know Christ, especially those I love most, come to Christ, trust in Him, and know peace and hope and love.

So what have been the "fruit" in my life? My own interests. When I take my eyes off Him, to look for the other things, the good things that He brings into my life, that is when I forget my real purpose. When I forget that there is more going on than meets the eye. And that I need to be sharing the love of my perfect Redeemer.

Do you know? Do you know that God is real? That heaven and hell are real? Do you know that you have a choice? To live for Him or to live for yourself.

Today I choose again to live for Him.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7