The man called Love

Alright, I promise this is not just a really really long blog about myself.... For my whole life I've always had vivid dreams and have always remembered them in the morning,  which I only discovered a while back is not something that everyone experiences. But a few weeks ago I had this dream which I could'nt get out of my head and it was more vivid than my dreams usually are, so after some praying and some deleted documents, I've turned my dream into a story and have decided to share it on here, because the bible says to speak in the daylight what i hear in the dark, so this is what Im doing. And I believe that this dream is so true of real life...that we build prisons of sin and shame and anger and lies up around ourselves and once we realise we are trapped, nothing we do is able to get us out of our own mess. But the good news is that Jesus, the man called Love is stronger than all of these prisons and is able to set us free to dance on the horizon with Him. I hope that this gives you as much joy as it has me!

I was the interior designer of my own prison. I worked long hours, night and day in the desert of Life to build it into a fortress so strong nothing could break in or out.

When I started, they had just given me a bare piece of ground, told me to make something out of it and when I looked around, everyone else had built prisons too. They were all different shapes and sizes of course but they were prisons all the same. No one that I could see had done anything different, so I didn’t think to either. I didn’t think about how I never saw those people walking around outside their prisons, or anyone else admiring them. Actually, I never saw anyone else at all now that I think about it, except occasionally, when the moon was full and the stars had been breathed out across the sky. On nights like that sometimes I would see someone dancing across the desert horizon, leaping and twirling, arms raised to the heavens. Something in me would jump and want to join them in that dance, but then I would look at my bare patch of ground again and know that I must stay, that this was more important that dancing for the stars.

I started my prison by laying a strong foundation, as everybody knows the foundation is the most important. So under the hot sun I poured out the expectations of the world. In one corner I started with the assumption that everyone must fight to get anywhere in this life. And towards the centre I poured the fact that everyday will eventually be the same and that you just have to get through them, then towards the other corner I poured the idea that money and stuff is the key to happiness. My foundation was complete.

Then I started with the brickwork, each brick a lie that I told the world so they would not know who I really was. Some of the ones I was most proud of were the bricks just above my head height that said I don’t need anyone, I am independent.  And also the one that said I am always happy, nothing ever makes me jealous or sad or confused. My favourite though, was the brick that said Everybody likes me all the time. There was a little problem though, when I went to find someone to show them my handiwork, I couldn’t get out because the lying bricks had been built too high. But it didn’t matter, I could show them later.

Once the bricks had been laid, I went to work on a coating of distance around my heart. This was very important because in the desert sometimes people tried to get close to me and touch my heart. This always scared me because my heart is sensitive and when people touched it like that, it would make me feel things and think about things. Sometimes it would even make me forget that I am independent and that I was the only person I needed to think about.  Those are dangerous thoughts, I have seen people disappear over the horizon completely once they had those thoughts, so you see, this coating of distance was very necessary for my prison. I put on two coats just to make sure that no one would ever come close to me like that.

Now it was time to build the roof. I wanted to get this done as soon as possible, because when I looked at the stars at night from my prison floor, I would sometimes hear the songs of those people who danced near the horizon, and my heart would beat a little faster and I would see in my mind their uplifted hands and flowing ribbons that they ran with. Sometimes this would get so bad that I had to pace the narrow corridors, repeating to myself my bricks of lies, that I was independent, that I didn’t need anyone, that dancing and singing were for fools. So I built my roof, big sheets of corrugated pride that kept all those noises out. There were still little gaps so I wound big coils of barbed wire fear that would make sure I never peeked through to see the dancers.

My prison was almost finished; I just needed to add the finishing touches. Some bars of Bitterness to put across the door, chains of Shame that would keep me from ever trying to leave my prison and padlocks of Worry that would drown out the memories of the singers with lists and chores and work.

My prison was complete.

But that night as I sat and admired all my years of work, I realised in a moment of horror that I had left the keys on the other side of those bars and that the walls were higher than I remembered and that the coating of distance was so thick that it drowned out all sound from the desert...in here, all I could hear was the pounding of my heart as I realised the wonderful prison I had built now had its one and only inmate.

At first I tried to break through my walls, throwing myself against them again and again, but I had built them too strong. I tried peeling back the sheets of pride on the roof, but I had put too many nails in and it was pointless. So I screamed and wept and scratched the distance on my walls but it was too thick, no one could break through.  No one saw me, no one heard me, and no one in the desert knew I was here.

In the darkness of that first night, I understood why I never saw any of the other prison builders.

Eventually I just gave up. Sat in the corner of my prison and allowed the lies I had built with to seep into me, to become a part of me, no longer could I tell where I stopped and my prison started.

Over the years, the paintwork faded and the roof rusted. Spiders and cockroaches were the only life inside these walls. Occasionally I would walk the corridors and allow my arms to scrape the stones. The sharp rocks would scratch me and the pain would remind me that I too was alive, if this sort of existence could even be called such thing. Dark fingers would reach out to me, coaxing me down, down to where nightmares are born. Their voices would surround me, go inside me and whisper that I was alone, that I would die here and no one would ever even know.

In time, the memories of the hot desert sun were replaced by the never ending chill inside my walls and the images of millions of stars were no longer able to be found.

But as I lay there in my bed of sin, sometimes the faintest whisper of the horizon dancers’ music would surface from somewhere deep deep inside me. I would weep as I remembered I used to hate them because they were foolish, but now I realised I hated them because they were free. And more than anything now, I wanted to join them and dance under those stars I couldn’t even remember.

I had fallen so far into nothingness; I couldn’t tell what was real anymore and didn’t have the energy to walk the corridor to remind myself anyway. But through that fog one night came the sound of thunder, a sound which shook even my strong foundations. I stared wide eyed into the eternal darkness as the beating of drums surrounded me matching my heartbeat so it seemed like my entire being pulsed with the rhythm of them. Dust was shaken free and fell from the rusty roof beams, coating the floor and my sin bed. The ground heaved beneath me and I fell as all around me the bricks, my strong bricks that I could never move, broke into a thousand pieces.

Then the light came, a piercing beam so bright that I couldn’t stand it, whimpering I crawled into the shadow of the rubble, trying to disappear into the dusty ruins of my prison. Noise assaulted my ears, ears which knew only the sound of my grief now heard laughter and singing and birds. I huddled in a tight ball, eyes squeezed tightly shut, knowing this is not happening, my prison was too strong, no force could break through. As I curled up in the dirt, all of the sounds faded and I heard a single set of footsteps. Was I not alone? Were people still out here?

The footsteps stopped and a shadow blocked the burning sunlight, I heard the rustling of clothes and the shuffling of feet.

Then He touched me.

No one had touched me before.

Holding my breath I slowly lifted my eyes and looked into the face of the One who knelt in the dirt beside me. Never will I forget that moment.

His eyes were the colour of Love and they looked past mine, into my soul and as He looked, the dark ones shrieked and faded away. His hands were rough and had scars which twisted His skin into knots. I knew looking at them, that the same force which had reduced my prison to rubble lay in those hands. That His scars were from breaking my walls. I too had tried to break them but instead my hands had been broken and bleeding while the bricks still stood. I held out my hands to show Him and saw only perfect, smooth skin. Had He taken my scars too?

He reached out and wrote in the dirt in front of me, whispered truth into the cold dark places of my soul. Then taking my hands in His, He drew me up to stand in the light. We walked together, me and the man called Love, out of the rubble and into the distance.

Now I live with the horizon dancers, where heaven meets earth. I spin and twist and leap under the night sky and sing with a new song. The darkness doesn’t live in me anymore, because I walk in the light. I am not a prisoner but have been set free. And I don’t need pain to tell me I am alive, because I have been touched by Life Himself.

I realise now that the people I used to catch a glimpse of, leaping across the horizon, didn’t dance for the stars as I once thought. No, they dance for the man called Love.