04 Dec FROM WHERE WE ARE TO WHERE WE ARE MEANT TO BE
Long before I was a believer, I was aware of how a seemingly unrelated event would be timed to guide me in an upcoming circumstance. I was a Junior in high school and ducked into a Woolworths one afternoon to grab a few things. There was a crystal clear moment when my eyes were riveted to a collection of college pennants high on a wall. One, made of navy blue felt with four white block letters, held my attention: DUKE.. A few hours later, my father sprung the question at dinner, “So, Valerie, I asked you to begin researching colleges, What schools are you thinking about?” I hadn’t begun my research, but before I could fess up, “DUKE” sprang out of my mouth. That led to a college visit and Duke’s acceptance of my application. The “seemingly unrelated event” of that navy and white pennant spoke to the circumstance of my father’s question to guide me from where I was to where I was meant to be,. But that is not the end of the story.
A little more than a year later, the week before I left for college, I dreamed the entire sequence of events that would take place in the minutes before I lay my eyes on my future husband for the very first time, I dreamed the dream, woke up, fell back asleep and forgot it—-until a screen door closed with a thud behind me my first week of classes, and the dream sprang to life as I began to walk it out detail by detail. As I stepped onto the main quad, a bus pulled up on my left, just like in the dream. And I could feel his eyes on me, from over my shoulder, just like in the dream. I wanted to bolt, but a soft warning kept me there, “You might miss your destiny.” So I turned to see the boy grinning at me with his books slung against his hip, just like I had seen him in my dream. We would marry three years later. (1)
I tell these two stories together to illustrate the detail to which God goes to bring us from where we are to where we are meant to be. I use the expression “where we are meant to be” to suggest there is an ideal place for us to collaborate with God in fulfilling our part in His divine purpose.. . . we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.. (Romans 8:28).
That place is psychological, spiritual, physical and relational. The ideal relational place for each of us will include certain people who are meant to be in our life because of what we will generate together. There is an ideal physical place in time and geography for us to accomplish what we are called to do.. (Acts 17:26) When we find and maintain our spiritual place, we will be in relationship with God, spirit to spirit, His life streaming in us, which we can have by no other way. The psychologically ideal place will be found by doing our soul work, becoming reconciled to God and each other. At some level of consciousness, we will be drawn to and stumble upon the place we are meant to be. My dream and that DUKE pennant hanging high on a wall were God’s helps to me as I was stumbling blindly, unaware of any of this.
I want to challenge my readers to consider that in eternity the future already exists, and that prophecy is a glimpse of that future coming to find us in time, Through her prophets God had revealed to Israel that He would destroy the sinful kingdom from the face of the earth (Amos 9:8), but He had also promised to raise her back up. again. On May 14th, 1948, David Ben-Gurion stood before a microphone to read The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, a momentous beginning to the fulfillment of that promise. The Sabbath would begin at sunset that evening. The scroll portion assigned to be read on that Sabbath from ages past came from the prophet Amos:
“On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old. . . I will restore My people Israel from captivity;, . they will rebuild and inhabit the ruined cities. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will firmly plant them in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land that I have given them, Amos 9:11,14
The tabernacle of David is a metaphor for the kingdom of David, which is what Israel is meant to be. The seemingly unrelated event of this word from Amos speaking to the circumstance of Israel being raised as a national state after two thousand years was like the thud of the screen door that morning at Duke, signaling that what had been shown to me from the future had just entered time. May we realize, may we recognize, may we rejoice in God bringing us from where we are to where we are meant to be.
*******************************************
(1) Job 33:14-16 NKJV For God may speak in one way, or in another, Yet man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, When deep sleep falls upon men, While slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men ,And seals their instruction.
“