Yesterday I shared a dream about being held back-- sidelined-- and commented on some of the frustration involved with having our plans become OBE -- Overtaken By Events. However, there are additional implications of being held back that are worth exploring.
I dreamed two nights ago that I was driving at night with my family, and it felt like an escape attempt. In the dream I didn't know where we were going, but it felt like it was important that we go-- that we get away from there. It felt like a bug-out. But right as our car reached a critical choke point in the road I felt the car being lifted up, then pulled backwards and then sideways as though on conveyor belts. Then the car stopped and I knew we were immobilized. I was no longer in control of the situation or of the timetable. Then I woke up.
As I considered the dream again last night when I couldn't sleep, I started to ask God about the first part of the dream. Why was I anxious to get out of there? Why would God sideline me instead of letting me go on about my business? In the dream, my car wasn't just stopped in its tracks. It wasn't just moved backwards. It was also moved sideways and nestled against the rocks. But why, God?
In Psalm 18, the future king David wrote a song to God, after God delivered him from King Saul, who was desperately trying to kill him. The New International Version translates it like this:
I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge...
I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
and I am saved from my enemies.
The Message gives a slightly different nuance to the same passage:
I love you, GOD-- you make me strong.
GOD is the bedrock under my feet,
the castle in which I live,
my rescuing knight.
My God-- the high crag where I run for dear life,
hiding behind the boulders, safe in the granite hideout.
I sing to GOD, the Praise-Lofty,
and find myself safe and saved.
In this passage, David compared taking refuge in God to hiding from his pursuing enemy in the rocks, hidden among the boulders. (In my dream, was God hiding us in the rocks to keep us from being sighted by the enemy who was pursuing us along the road?) I am thinking of a gripping scene from the The Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers. In this scene Frodo and Sam are trapped by a rock slide at the Black Gate, and the enemy was approaching. In desperation, Frodo took his elven cloak and draped it over himself and Sam, camouflaging them as dusty boulders until the enemy moved safely down the road.
Sometimes God hides his servants. In Jeremiah 36, the prophet dictates the Word of the LORD to his secretary Baruch who writes all of it down on a scroll. The scroll finds its way to King Jehoiakim, who reads it aloud to his cabinet in his winter quarters where there is a fire going. As he reads, he slices the read portion off with his knife and disdainfully tosses it in the fire. Then he issues orders to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch, "but the LORD had hidden them." (Jeremiah 36:26).
In my dream, the car was stopped right as I came to a choke point where the road narrowed down to a single lane, the ideal location for an ambush. As I recall the dream, my mind wanders to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BC, as recounted in 2 Kings 25:
By the fourth month of Zedekiah's eleventh year, on the ninth day of the month, the famine was so bad that there wasn't so much as a crumb of bread for anyone. Then there was a breakthrough. At night, under cover of darkness, the entire army escaped through and opening in the wall (it was the gate between the two walls above the King's Garden). They slipped through the lines of the Babylonians who surrounded the city and headed for the Jordan on the Arabah Valley road. But the Babylonians were in pursuit of the king and they caught up with him in the Plains of Jericho. By then Zedekiah's army had deserted and was scattered. The Babylonians took Zedekiah prisoner and marched him off to the king of Babylon at Riblah, then tried and sentenced him on the spot. Zedekiah's sons were executed right before his eyes; the summary murder of his sons was the last thing he saw, for they then blinded him. Securely handcuffed, he was hauled off to Babylon...
King Zedekiah led his pursuers on a merry chase, but he ultimately lost that contest. He knew who was hunting him, but that's not always the case with us. We may be pursued without even knowing of the approaching enemy, hot on our heels. Neither can we look ahead. We usually don't know what dangers are waiting for us and we can't just send a drone ahead to scout for an ambush.
So in the dream, I was fleeing and had a plan to drive down this particular road through that nondescript chokepoint. But right as I got there, God stopped my car and then moved it physically backwards and sideways up against the rocks, well off the road. I was NOT allowed to proceed. My plans were ruined! MY plans, that is. But what if God was saving me from danger ahead, or hiding me from unseen pursuers? What if He cancelled my most excellent plans in order to protect me?
Maybe you too have been inexplicably held back. You didn't get the big promotion, or maybe a serious illness or a change in your family situation has stopped you in your tracks. You are stuck right there in the middle of nowhere, and going absolutely nowhere. You just don't understand. Like me, you're asking God why. Why were you held back? Why were you sidelined? Why aren't you being allowed to carry out your plans-- to follow your dreams? Are you being punished? So unfair of God, really. But... is it?
May we trust The God Who Sees Me (Genesis 16:13) to act on our behalf, even when we don't understand the why.
Comments