where waves grow sweet

Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. Isaiah 54:11-12

I know I share a lot of dreams and mental images. It is the way I understand things, so one of the primary ways God shows me stuff. Kind of like the way he talks to me. Arabic might be neat and exotic, and I’m sure he speaks it flawlessly, but I just wouldn’t get it. So he talks to me in English and shows me things in pictures.

Right after I moved to Colorado about 10 years ago, I had a dream. I had an awesome dream. Sorry – Lionel Richie flashback. Anyway, in this dream I was building a brick wall, which was almost complete. There were only 4 or 5 bricks missing, all in the very middle. My unorthodox way of building was to slide each brick in from the side. As it fit in place, it was sealed perfectly – not with mortar but with a flash of gold. I know a brick wall doesn’t sound beautiful, but it was. I knew it to be my life, the way the Lord was establishing something strong and sound, in which nothing was wasted. The tidiness of the image was significant because of a history of bad choices that, in my mind, looked tremendously messy and nothing at all like this flawlessly constructed wall… worked on with my hands and perfected by God.

Nearly three years later, when I was about to move back to California, I was walking around my neighborhood letting my heart say goodbye. In the midst of my reflection, I saw in my mind the same brick wall from my dream 3 years before. It was now complete. The picture panned around the corner where I saw another side of the wall. This one was so delightful it took my breath away. Embedded in the bricks were hundreds or thousands of jewels in whimsical designs. In fact, the brick was hardly noticeable anymore. I knew it wasn’t a reflection of my life at that moment, but a picture of what was to come.

As I step back and observe what God has done in these past 7 years since moving back, I see so clearly the joyful shapes of sparkling jewels embedded in my world. All I can do is smile and lift up my heart in thanks.

There was more I wanted to tie into this but that seems like such a sweet note to end on… and it does happen to be quite late. So I’ll leave you with that, wish you the loveliest of dreams, and write more soon.