I stand amazed

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth. –Psalm 8:1a (NKJV)

I had a dream a couple nights ago. I awoke around 3AM with a need to go to the bathroom. This is not unusual for “men of a certain age”, which age I have apparently reached. Most nights, I take care of the needful and make my way back to bed, falling back asleep within five minutes or so. Occasionally, I find the Holy Spirit using that time to remind me of something. Those times often begin with something that has been on my mind, a worry that I need to commit to prayer.

This time started that way, but the Spirit quickly told me, “We already discussed this and I told you I got it. Just relax. I wanna show you something.” I don’t know how often I dream, because I hardly ever remember my dreams. This one felt like it happened in that in-between state where you think you might be kind of awake, but not quite, and you’re pretty sure you’re dreaming, but things seem really real, but you know they probably aren’t.

It started with me watching dust flecks floating in a sunbeam. They were just hanging there, sometimes bumping into one another, frantically scattering and re-grouping at any disturbance in the surrounding air. While contemplating whether this had any significance other than to entertain me in the moment, I suddenly found myself walking down a river. Not beside a river, IN the river, all the way to the ocean, which I entered and continued walking, along the ocean floor. I wasn’t drowning, and the scene was peaceful, not unlike something you’d see in a BBC documentary narrated by David Attenborough.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)

I continued walking beneath the deeps until there was hardly any visible life. As the sunlight from the surface faded, there were fissures in the floor leading to underwater caves and trenches that I suppose would have stretched downward for a mile or more. I was not afraid, as I felt something very large that was with me, guiding and protecting me. I perceived that giant force to be the presence of God, and it told me to look up. When I did so, I was taken aback by the sheer vastness of the ocean and how small I was in comparison.

As if sensing my thoughts, the Force seemed to say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” Immediately, we were rushing through the universe, beyond our solar system, beyond our galaxy, traveling at unimaginable rates of speed and yet able to perceive amazing details in the stars, planets, and meteoroids we passed. We paused a good ways out into the void. I looked back in the direction of Earth, which was now a speck in a far-away cluster of stars which I assumed to be the Milky Way. Again I had the feeling of being really tiny in a place that was really big. The Presence said that was enough for now. It was time to go home.

Feeling warm all over, infinitesimally small but also most assuredly safe, I found myself back in the rocking chair in my bedroom, observing the specks of dust dancing in the sunbeam. Then the dream ended.

I woke up enough to glance at the clock. It was now 4:52AM, almost time to get up. My busy sleep had taken close to two hours. I returned to my prayer and thanked God for being mindful of me. Like the flecks of dust in my dream, I am small, mostly unaware, easily swayed by outside circumstances, my time in the sun lasting only a moment. And yet…. He sees me. He knows me. He gives me significance. I am His. He loves the people I care about even more than I do. The situations I fret over are no match for His infinite, sovereign majesty. I stand amazed in the Presence.

What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? –Psalm 8:4 (NKJV)