A dream I had last night
Last night I had a dream, and like most dreams, it was weird. The dream was of a church camp full of anthropomorphic animals. They were doing weird Victorian era things, wearing fancy clothes, riding bikes etc. It reminded me of Beatrix Potter Stories or the Wind in the Willows.
I was walking around this bizarre world when stumbled upon a secret area full of their food. And some of it was alive animals, arranged in a sort of buffet. In a bowl of water there lay hundreds of little baby mice sleeping. And I looked from the tiny baby mice out to the main area and some of the animals I could see were also mice, walking around in suits. And I saw them swallowing little sleeping mice whole.
I looked back at the tiny sleeping mice in the water horrifed, saying out loud to no one in particular “these are the mice Jesus would’ve come for” and I took two of them and put them on a plate from the buffet. I had no idea how I could get even these two to safety with all the animals watching, and I felt terrible for the rest I was leaving behind.
The dream ended when I saw the little mice on the plate begin to wake up, moments later my mind cleared of the fog of sleep and I began to weep for the lost mice that the world had no compassion on. Almost immediately I realized the dream was about one of my students. She is a one of those invisible people who just drift through life, no one paying attention. There are many students like that, but this one in particular is deeply isolated from her peers emotionally, I knew it was about her. I am not this person, I am not someone who dreams and knows what the dream is about. But I knew God was communicating to me through this dream and that he wanted me to communicate to this forgotten baby mouse that God loves her. I knew it as clearly as I see my own hand typing this.
Jesus picked people like that to be apostles. For all we know most of the apostles couldn’t even read or write. They were certainly not men of high regard. Jesus went looking for the lost lambs of Israel to create an entire people who would go and do the same, because they were like those baby mice plucked from obscurity. God does not worship what we worship, he does not go to the rich and handsome and place his stamp of approval upon them. Instead he finds those the world deems losers, people cast aside, and he says these are my people. You who were no people I will make into my people.
He’s not super interested in the championship winning QB. He’s deeply invested in the awkward gamer girl, who no one talks to at lunch, whose parents are going through a divorce, who walks from class to class quietly trying to remain invisible because she’s so full of shame it hurts to even have people notice her. But deep down she wants to be noticed, she wants to be told she’s good in some way, that there’s more to life than this constant fear that gnaws in her stomach that she’ll eventually find out that really she is a loser.
In Christ those people have a seat at the table if only they are willing to sit. There’s a place with their name on it, where friendly faces wait with open hands and they say “we’ve been waiting for you! We’re so glad you’ve finally made it.”
And that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.