ELUSIVE DREAMS

 

Is your heart filled with broken dreams and unfulfilled desires and more questions than you have answers for? Are you languishing in ‘the waiting room’ wondering what purpose your life is serving? There is someone who waited a long time for the fulfilment of not only his desire, but God’s promise. He waited on the Lord until it seemed there was little chance that he would ever have the desire of his heart. The promise was made and not fulfilled for 37 years. But Abraham, ‘the friend of God’, still believed. By the time the promise was fulfilled, Abraham’s wife Sarah, was not only infertile but well past the child bearing age, so divine intervention was needed. 

 

Sarah languished for 37 years in ‘the waiting room’ so that a greater purpose can be fulfilled for she was required to pave the path of belief. Because of her miraculous conception, she made it possible for many to also believe in the conception of a virgin who brought forth the Son of God.  So the birth of Isaac became a similitude of the birth of Him who would fulfill the promise to Abraham that in his posterity all nations of the earth would be blessed. Did Sarah and Abraham understand this at the time? No doubt they had to live by faith like everyone else.

 

One of the covenants we make in the temple is a covenant of sacrifice. We basically promise we will give our all. When we stood in the grand council in pre-mortal life, we covenanted that we will be a part of the great work of the plan of salvation (D&C 138:55,56), that in the sacrifice of ‘all’, we would include our own desires for the greater good.  This meant that we would trust the reasons ‘why’ to make the plan of salvation work for all. If you can do this, you are walking in Saviour’s footsteps. The Saviour had nothing of earthly value. I rather suspect that He had some desires and expectations of His own when He was here but He surpassed them all with His commitment to us. This was His purpose.

 

Some of us are strangers and wanderers on this earth (Hebrews 11:11-13; D&C 45:11-13) who have very little and whose dreams elude them. We wonder what purpose this could possibly serve but there is a purpose in everything, if we are faithful. God's purpose will be done through you and for you and will be in the end revealed to you. You might be a Sarah or Abraham and you might not even know it.

 

You go with me

Wherever You send me to go;

Over plains, seas and roughest roads,

 I am dismayed I have

To wander in search of my bed;

Then I remember foxes had holes

And the birds of the air had nests

But You had nowhere to lay down Your head.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art by Catrin Welz-Stein)