Love for God...

I am finding through fatherhood that moments continually occur that illuminate in a very real way what I thought I had already grasped. If you have seen the Disney movie, "Madagascar", you remember that it begins with a young lion trying to learn to roar from his father. His father roars with the awe & fear-inspiring, ear-crushing roar of the adult male lion...and the son lets out a squeak - when he's doing well. Well, on a whim a couple of weeks ago I "roared" at Caleb, and he thought it was the greatest game ever! Since then we have been 'roaring' and 'squeaking' back and forth constantly. The last couple of days it has degenerated into daddy smiling and laughing insanely at Caleb while he laughs insanely back and furiously kicks his legs trying to get away from daddy who is stalking him. We probably spent 30 minutes last night making mom laugh out of control even while she was trying to get us to settle down because it was well past Caleb's bedtime - love you mommy!

All that leads up to the text that I received this morning from Niki - "Caleb fell asleep and is belly laughing in his sleep! Dreaming about you, I think!" Wow! What an amazing feeling! My son asleep, but dreaming about his father - me! I had never even considered the thought, and when I did it brought me to tears. I love 'little man' so much - the thought of me inhabiting his dreams and bringing him joy means the world to me. I hope and pray that I am a source of peace and joy in his life. 

More and more, things in life are continuously sparking spiritual revelations for me. What a picture of how we ought to love our Mighty, Holy, and Loving God! Think about your dreams and how they correlate to life. Dreams are often born out of those things that are most pressing and important in our minds. Stress and anxiety produce dreams 'after their kind.' Putting certain ideas and pictures in your mind continually produce dreams 'after their kind.' Our mind is ever busy even while our body is at rest. How many of us remember having dreams about sharing the gospel, or about joyous family moments, of what eternity may be like, or even of persecution because of a life lived in faith? Many of us have had those dreams. How much more do we dream the other kinds of dreams, though? What does that say about where our minds are most efforting through the day, or how well we are dealing with the temporal by understanding the temporal in light of the eternal? Would that I, would that we, go to sleep and dream dreams of joy rested in the Father, the Son and the Spirit because that is who all of our hearts and minds are set upon all of every day!