Perspective.

It's all how you see it.

And I'm realizing that lately I've been looking from the wrong perspective. 

It's easy to get stressed or frustrated or discouraged when all you see is the here and now.
When schoolbooks and assignments pile high and additional responsibilities add to the mountain.
When it seems like you are just barely making it from one day to another, one week to the next. 

But last night in the quiet of the evening I saw a glimpse of hurting hearts, pleading eyes, thankful smiles.
And I was reminded why I'm here and why I'm doing what I am.

Perspective changes everything.

Asian Aid: Giving Hope Today (video)

A Different Dream

Sometimes I wonder how it can be so hard to let a dream die.

Just when you think you've come to the point of full surrender, of letting go, you wake up and realize that deep within the dream is still there. Suppressed maybe, but very much still there despite all heart-searing efforts to remove it.

It's an interesting feeling when your heart plays tug-of-war. One half sings. The other half cries. Yet in the end it knows what is best. It knows what will hurt least in the long run.

And that is to surrender. To let the dream die.
Because the dream was never mine to cherish in the first place…

In fact, no dream is mine to cherish.
No dream but One.

And so I pray a simple prayer.

Lord, make my life Your dream. And make my dream, You.

Photo Credit: Michel Lee

False Dreams

{Jeremiah 23}

The priests and prophets of Jeremiah’s day were blatantly defiant. 

Their complete disregard for the word of the Lord was blasphemous, their counterfeit prophesy a direct slander to His name.

“I have dreamed,” they would said, but their words were full of deceit. They claimed to have received revelations from the Source of wisdom, yet in reality their dreams were fabricated by the originator of lies.

I stop to ponder… Do I have false dreams? 

Dreams that I am contriving on my own? 

Dreams that are not surrendered to the Dream Fulfiller?

Dreams that are actually thought traps?

I pray not and once again quietly surrender all into His hands. 

Personal interpretation of God’s will is absolutely dangerous. 

For how can a finite mind think to understand the mind of the Infinite? 

I want His dreams to be my dreams…