Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar (Isaiah 33:17)
Most of my dreams frustrate me. Only a few times have I ever remembered more than a few hazy images of what a few seconds earlier had been quite vivid and real. Most times I’m more likely to just roll over and return to making zzzz’s. Sound familiar? If I can believe what doctors say (and what I read on Wikipedia) about dreaming, then I feel still more cheated by my own mind’s trickery. According to the experts, an average normal human being dreams two hours every night, so over a normal lifespan I will spend six years dreaming. About what?! I cannot even remember most of the details of these episodes, yet I seem to need this bizarre activity to be healthy – rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is necessary for one’s well being, they say. Is our Creator trying to tell us something about our own minds when they are let loose, when our own thoughts can create images our logical consciousness will not permit? Bart Millard, lead singer with MercyMe and writer of the hit song “I Can Only Imagine” might be described as a dreamer, for he began considering his own imagination many years ago, and his thoughts stuck with him until he finally composed what had so struck him several years earlier. You can read about Bart’s story behind this song by linking to it here http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2003/002/14.16.html, or keep reading below.
Bart lost his father to cancer in 1991, and he relates that he turned that loss into a time devoted to thinking about what his dad was experiencing on the other side of life’s journey. The phrase “I can only imagine” captured his thoughts, so that he wrote it everywhere, reminding himself of his own destiny and also easing the pain of his earthly loss. It was not until 1999, however, that Bart and his friends in MercyMe recorded the song with that same phrase. Bart says the song was written in ten minutes after he found the words he had recorded in a notebook many years before. Bart deflects the admirers who wonder how he was able to write a hit song so rapidly “….it had been on my heart for almost ten years”, he says. “I ask Him (God) questions. I have faith that Christ is real”, Millard shares. It’s clear that MercyMe’s lead singer’s imagination is not something he ignores as a hazy picture, a subconscious mind-trick at 3:00 AM.
Bart lost his father to cancer in 1991, and he relates that he turned that loss into a time devoted to thinking about what his dad was experiencing on the other side of life’s journey. The phrase “I can only imagine” captured his thoughts, so that he wrote it everywhere, reminding himself of his own destiny and also easing the pain of his earthly loss. It was not until 1999, however, that Bart and his friends in MercyMe recorded the song with that same phrase. Bart says the song was written in ten minutes after he found the words he had recorded in a notebook many years before. Bart deflects the admirers who wonder how he was able to write a hit song so rapidly “….it had been on my heart for almost ten years”, he says. “I ask Him (God) questions. I have faith that Christ is real”, Millard shares. It’s clear that MercyMe’s lead singer’s imagination is not something he ignores as a hazy picture, a subconscious mind-trick at 3:00 AM.
What do you think of when you dream about paradise, about heaven? Pearly gates? Streets of gold, or a yellow-brick road such as the path to Emerald City in Dorothy’s journey through Oz? That’s what I tend to wonder about…it almost seems similar to some of the images in Revelation. Bart Millard wonders in the song what it will be like to be in God’s presence, to walk with Him, to actually see Him. I think that, like the song says, I won’t even be able to stand or say anything for a while, if heaven and the Lord are as brilliant as I imagine. A River of Life is there, I’m told, but I still cannot really grasp that people I now see only in my mind or with pictures are there. Dad, a grandpa I never met (and who’s last words I’m told were ‘what a life’), and friends in the last few years…Bill, Sarah, Bob. They’re there. And I wonder if I’ve discovered why God lets, or perhaps makes, me dream. Is it His way of subliminally telling me my hazy thoughts, though dim, are gonna become real, someday? That I should trust my imagination, and let it run wild, to rejoice in what awaits? I’m counting on it, aren’t you?
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