The Meaning of Our Lives

Just before I woke up I had the weirdest dream. I believe a dream that the Lord placed on my heart to tell me something.

In my dream...I was living under my landlord as I am now but there was a woman who was chained out back behind some sheds and other buildings. She was being chained out there night and day. No water. No blanket to take away the night chill. Nothing. Just chained and alone.

In my dream I was moved to go and give her a cup of water even though my landlord would not have liked that (in my dream). As I walked out to give her that cup of water I was also thinking I could bring her my blanket (since I had a sleeping bag in my dream in addition to my blanket it would not have mattered).

The verse kept coming to mind in my dream about how we are to remember those in prison as if we ourselves are in prison.

As I came out of the house and started walking toward where she was I asked the Lord to encourage her through me. To strengthen her heart through what I was doing and through whatever words I might be able to share with her.

Right at that moment the alarm on my clock woke me up.

As I prayed over the dream wondering what it might mean and why the Lord had placed such a dream in my heart, I at first began to wonder if the person in the dream was Jesus in the person of me wanting to give me a cup of cold comforting water in the midst of my present trial.

But as I prayed some more it become evident that the Lord was reminding me of the fact that a woman is moving into the room next door. A woman in whose life He might want to use me.

I believe that is what the dream was about.

You see I often get caught up in what is happening in my own life and tend to forget and just pass by people who I come across. I mean I see them and interact with them but mostly I am thinking of myself. Not them.

Although I am a Christian it has completely skipped my mind that this woman moving in might either be a Christian herself or might be in need of salvation.

But even more fundamentally that she might be in need of love. God's love. Coming to her through me. Even in a form as seemingly benign as a cup of cold water.

Perhaps she has been chained for years under some character flaw. Some sin. Some negativity.

And a cup of cold water from someone who, for one minute stops thinking of themselves and thinks about her, might mean the world to her in the prison of her personal trials and circumstances.

So many of us don't stop to ponder our lives and how the Lord might want to personally use us. In my case I needed a dream from God to remind me of that.

And to remind me that the greatest thing of all is not faith. It is not hope in the resurrection and in heaven. It is LOVE.

A love that steps out of our comfort zone. Out of ourselves and reaches across the chasm that lies between us all and into the very heart of another.

Such love is so incredibly rare. Even among the Christians.

I have rarely seen such love in action. The kind of love that makes you feel good. The kind that touches you deeply. The kind that encourages you to realize that someone truly cares for you. That you are not alone in this world struggling with your trials. That someone else is there. That you will not be forgotten and remain abandoned.

That is a love I yearn for inside. That is a love that all of us want.

It starts with the Lord in our hearts operating to produce that kind of love inside of us through an awareness of His love for us. And it spills out into the lives of others as He touches them through us.

If we will just let Him. If we will willingly lay down our lives to love others according to their needs and not our own.

If we will stop feeling sorry for ourselves, look up, and see the people in need of His love all around us.

You know sometimes, oftentimes actually, thoughts of the seeming hopelessness of my life and of how useless I am come across my mind.

Today, through my dream, I was reminded of the fact that the purpose of our lives is to be found, not in some grand battle to be fought, not in some great invention to be made for the benefit of mankind, or in some great book to write...it is to be found in how we treat those the Lord has placed into our path.

No one else is there for the people we encounter in every day life but...us. We are it.

At the moment of our contact with them it is just us and them. No one else.

And how we reach out to others and express the love of God to them will determine whether our lives were worth living. Whether the air we breath and the water we drink was worth the life we lived or not.

Glorifying God is the purpose of our lives. And how best can we exhibit and glorify who He is to the world if not by loving the person next to us on the bus, in our homes, on the street or wherever we happen to meet them.

If we seek to have a life that is more full of meaning and true purpose we need not go off into solitude and contemplation. We need not go on a retreat into the wilderness of our own lives to see if we can discover the meaning of life within ourselves.

All we need to do to find the meaning and purpose that we all seek is to look into the face of Christ and love those around us as He did.

That's it.

There is no higher calling in life than that. Truly.

If we do that we can change the world. If we do that we will change ourselves into the kind of people we want to be. If we do that we will please God and walk worthy of Him.

If we do that we will be Christ in this world again. We will be able to say as Paul the Apostle did that it was no longer he who lived but Christ who lived in Him.

So I prayed for the grace to remember the woman all chained up in my dream when I next meet the new tenant that is moving in. For the grace to see past myself and to love her according to her needs.

And that God would strengthen my heart through the continuing realization that He has designs on my life that are far greater, more full of meaning, and more profoundly significant than that which could ever be had by living for myself .

That walking in His footsteps to do what He did in loving others is the greatest privilege and honor one could possibly hope for in this life.

Carlos