The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community (even if their intentions are ever so earnest), but the person who loves those around them will create community.
~ Deitrich Boenhoffer
I ran across this quote on a website the other day, and it’s one of my new favorites. I think it’s going to need to be one of those that I come back to over and over when I need a little reminder that dreams have the power to inspire… or destroy. Ouch.
I tend to get stuck worshipping the dream. I can talk all day and all night about what community should look like and feel like. The Spouse tells me all the time that I should have been a community planner so I could get paid to dream up idyllic places for people to live and work and eat and shop.
I am guilty of letting “somewhere over the rainbow” and “the grass is always greener” mentalities take over my mind and heart. And, too often, this dreaming is an impediment to enjoying the real thing. I love my dream of community. I love my dream of marriage. I love my dream of family. I love my dream of church. But, at some point, I have to stop and ask myself what those dreams are accomplishing. Sure, dreams are healthy when they are spurring us on toward new possibilities and energizing us with vision and passion for worthy causes. But what about those pie-in-the-sky dreams that sneak in and take hold to create unrealistic, joy-depleting expectations of ourselves and everyone around us?
So, I have to ask myself… How much better would my community, my marriage, my family life, and my overall perspective be if I just focused on loving the people around me? And, I mean really focused on that. What if I quit reading about, watching, and lusting for things on the other side of the proverbial fence and started tending to my own “grass” with a little more love and attention. What would that look like?
I guess that’s my challenge for this week (and beyond!). I’m going to try and think less about how wonderful life would be “if only…” and more about how I can go about enjoying what already IS to create something pretty special right where I am.
** Thoughts/Advice?? What are you dreaming about? Are you loving your dream, or how are you creating it? **
well I think of Moses traveling the wilderness and wondering and dreaming about the promise land. We all must trust and obey even if it is not our plan but God's plan for us. It's hard to keep our focus on Him but we are human. So my thought is we must take the wilderness as the path to our promise land. <3 Julie
I like the Moses analogy, Julie. There's stuff to be done and joy to be found in the wilderness, too, right?
Absolutely Hollie!