The Sycamore Tree

I can see it as if it were yesterday -- the big old sycamore tree in our front yard.  I was only 5 or 6 years old and this tree seemed enormous.  It was a favorite place of mine in the center of the front yard.  I loved to lie on the ground on summer days and look up through its branches at the glimpses of blue sky and white, fluffy clouds.  And that's where I dreamed imagining the clouds were moving along with me to places of fantasy, strange places and transporting me to another time and place. 

That's what dreams are about at any age, aren't they?  Another place, another time, another country, another whatever.  Dreams can take us away from the every day drudgery that becomes so common place that it bores us to tears.  And then dreams can fall apart and disappoint us.  Sometimes they become so real to us that their inability to come to fruition is sensed as failure.

But with God dreams aren't all that important for He promises us a place in the clouds that is real and can be ours simply by believing.  Yes, believing and having faith in Him and His Word.  It sounds difficult to believe in a being we can't see, or touch, or actually hear.  Yet I know Him as real.  He is active in my life, day in and day out.  He is in charge of my very being, my life, my dreams.  He knows before I do what is going to happen.  And it plays out according to God's plan, except when I get in the way and attempt to take control. 

Yes, childhood dreams and even the dreams we have as we grow older are amazing escapes from the reality of life, but God dreams are the plans He has made for our lives if we but believe and have faith. 

So, under that old sycamore tree, I made and planned childhood dreams, and all the while God was planning the rest of my days.  What a comfort that is.

“By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

Ephesians 2:8-9.