Listen Up!

"How do you get the ideas for your music?" the interviewer asked the child prodigy in a television interview I was watching yesterday. The gifted eight-year-old replied that when she tries to think of something, her mind goes blank, but sometimes when she is resting in the middle of the night, the words and melodies come to her.

"Then I get up and write them down, and my parents wonder why I look so sleepy the next morning," she exclaimed with a winsome smile.

Then I read the testimony of a political news contributor from a major network of how she became an evangelical Christian. She had viewed believers with contempt and sarcasm, but one night Jesus came to her in a dream or wakeful state, she wasn't sure which.  He said, "Here I am."  She began to meet God at every corner, it seemed, and her life was changed.

Since I write a blog/devotional, I am always on the lookout for inspiration in everyday happenings. Sometimes when a few days go by and nothing clicks, something will come to me in the middle of the night.  Fragments of memories and unrelated ideas float around in my relaxed mind, begin to coalesce, and often come together in a meshing and realization of God's goodness and presence that I can share with my readers.

David says in Psalm 63:5-6, " My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches."

"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.  In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instructions," Job 33:14-16.

Many stories abound of people of eastern religions to whom Jesus has appeared in a dream.  God wants everyone to know Him and the plan of salvation.  Lately I have exclaimed over all the glorious fall colors and have recognized God in the beauty of His creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork," Psalm 19:1.

Romans 1:20 expounds, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."  Dreams, visions, sermons, the Bible, personal witness, the printed page,  and the internet, to name a few, are means to draw people to Christ.  Matthew 11:15: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."  Even in a dream!