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 something that flashed across the pharmacy lobby T.V. screen yesterday: the "Giving Tree", about a book by Shel Silversteen. Have you read that picture book? 

The application makes a big difference. God can give all, unreservedly, but with humans, you've gotta think in terms of moderation, balance, fairness, etc. Can the unregenerate mind make sense of how an Infinite, Immortal Soul can spend itself empty for self-centered man? Then He calls, "Come," (Matt. 11:28-29); if we'd repent and rest our weary souls in Him, like that Tree, He'd be happy. But many of us have found the very gifts given us keeps us satisfied from Him (Isa.57:10) until much too late.

Here's an imaginary "epilogue" of sorts: the boy dies, but the trunk offers long slivers of bark to weave into a wicker "natural coffin" for popular back-to-earth burials; then even the last bits of its remaining wood to be ground into pulp for paper on which are written stories about the boy, kept alive in readers' minds  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!