Thursday, July 13, 2006
dream.
Returning home today and feeling extremely tired, I took a nap that lasted me the whole afternoon till a call awoke me. The call was an unknown number and there was no one on the other line. But no matter, that was besides the point; the call woke me up, and of course I could not go back to sleep anymore for the day.While asleep I dreamt that friends of mine, one of them specifically being Jiaying my friend from my previous church, were into missions and a lot of active, meaningful ministry for people in various tangible areas. I was an older adult, maybe at an age truly reflective of how old I really am now, or perhaps some age later than now. I do not know for sure the time represented in my dream, but I know that where I was, time had already passed me by.
It felt like this: Imagine you are on a wheel, a dial that resembles perhaps the knob on the washing machine, or microwave oven. It goes in one direction, say anti-clockwise, for the spring allows it only so. Imagine this wheel is on another, something that rotates more freely, like that of a bicycle or roulette. Aesthetically, or design-wise, this analogy has no visual appeal whatsoever. But for the purposes of my communicating to you, it suffices till I become a better story-weaver. The freer wheel, is time, is rotating in the other direction most of the time (unless you decide to turn back time and reminisce), so smoothly as if it were freshly lubricated and made not a single sound. As you go in one seemingly right direction, time goes by in the other without you even realising it, and time passes you by, while you, in reality, have stagnated.
I felt like time had passed me by, while I was busy with whatever I am busy with now, and I barely realised it, till I realised I was so distant from the things of my friends' worlds. These things of their worlds were promises made and kept on their end, to themselves and to God, for their calling into missions, just like I have my promise. While I supposedly stayed where I was for the moment, thinking it was the right thing to do, time and the season passed and my dial was actually moving backwards against it. In my dream, the things my friend Jiaying was involved in were things that I would have known intimately too were I also in the mission field, but I didn't; they sounded so alien and strange. Jiaying is my age and through growing up somewhat together we both knew our calling was in missions and we would serve out our burdens with fire in our bellies, no longer I that liveth. But in my dream, she had gone on, while I didn't, and I hardly knew anything about missions anymore. At the point I realised that I had stagnated over the years, while the season, the appointed time, kairos, had come and I was not in it like I was supposed to have been. It almost make me bend over with regret to know this.
This dream was like a look into the future, if only a warning and not a foretold prophecy. Here I am, already having been an adult for many years, finally feeling like life is really really too short, that I could have saved some of the time that had passed. Yet this dream makes that feeling of waste even more acute by a number of years. Soon, I will be in my thirties, and it might really be too late. Where am I going?
Labels: worlds