IN PAPA'S LAP

Isn't it infuriating when you KNOW something was "crystal clear" in a dream, but the moment you get upright, the body fluids rush out of your brain and you LOSE the whole thing?! I think if I were a film director, I would show tenants in the apartment of the head rushing downstairs and out the doors of the building, turning out lights as they go, showing what happens.

"In Papa's Lap." It was about those three words, about starting every morning climbing into my Heavenly Father's arms. It's maddening  because I've felt for a long time now how it is important to do so, but this dream made it so undeniably simple yet slightly different from anything I've said before. But...what was it? I sympathize, partially, with Nebuchadnezzar's feeling of wanting to know what his dream was. 

"For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he himself doeth;" (John 5:20)

Daniel got it right. He knew the mighty God Who loves us is also the giving God who shows us the secrets of our minds and told Nebuchadnezzar so.

I was thinking of a book review of the "Giving Tree" that flashed across the pharmacy waiting room T.V. screen when we went Friday afternoon. Have you read it? 

Altho' this kind of giving cannot be maintained for Finite man, can the unregenerate mind make sense of how an Infinite Savior would empty Himself for self-centered man? Then He calls, "Come," (Matt.11:28-29); but many of us have found the very gifts He's given us keeps us satisfied from Him (Isa.57:10), and we don't realize it until we're worn out and all we can do IS rest in Him. But then, like that tree, He too is happy.

Here's an imaginary "epilogue" of sorts to that story: the boy dies, but the tree trunk offers long slivers of bark to weave into a wicker-natural coffin for popular back-to-earth burials; then its last bits of wood are ground into pulp for sheets of paper to keep stories about the boy alive  for generations in books such as The Giving Tree.

No; the God of Heaven didn't send me the continuation of a dream of a child on a Father's Knee. He sent visual images of a carefree little boy in the boughs of Grace.

Wow; Now THAT was a surprise!