"I don't often remember my dreams, nor do I put much stock in them, but, several years ago, I had a dream that caused me to do both. It highlights the most important of all truths: that God is love and that only by letting that kind of love into our lives can we save ourselves from disappointment, shame, and sadness. It went something like this:
"For whatever reason, and dreams don't give you a reason, I was asked to go to an airport and pick up Jesus, who was arriving on a flight. I was understandably nervous and frightened. A bevy of apprehensions beset me: How would I recognize him? What would he look like? How would he react to me? What would I say to him? Would I like what I saw? More frightening yet, would he like what he saw when he looked at me?
"With those feelings surging through me, I stood, as one stands in a dream, at the end of a long corridor nervously surveying the passengers who were walking toward me. How would I recognize Jesus, and would his first glance at me reflect his disappointment?
"But this was a good dream and it taught me as much about God as I'd learned in all my years of studying theology. All of my fears were alleviated in a second. What happened was the opposite of all my expectations: Suddenly, walking down the corridor toward me was Jesus, smiling, beaming with delight, coming straight for me, rushing, eager to meet me. Everything about him was stunningly and wonderfully disarming. There was no awkward moment; everything about him erased that. His eyes, his face, and his body embraced me without reserve and without judgment. I knew he saw straight through me, knew all my faults and weaknesses, my lack of substance, and none of it mattered. And, for that moment, none of it mattered to me either. Jesus was eager to meet me!
"In a moment like this, one forgets everything, except that God is here. There's no place for fear or shame or wondering what God thinks of you. That's a lesson all of us must somehow learn, somehow experience. We live with too much fear of God. Partly it is bad theology, but mostly we fear God because we've never experienced the kind of love that is manifest in God. We take for granted that anyone who sees us as we really are (in our unloveliness, weaknesses, pathology, sin, insubstantiality) will, in the end, be as disappointed with us as we are with ourselves.
"At the end of the day, we expect that God is disappointed with us and will greet us with a frown. The tragedy and sadness here is that we avoid God when we are most in need of love and acceptance. Because we think God is disappointed in us, especially at those times when we are disappointed in ourselves, we fail to meet the one person, the one love, and the one energy — God — that actually understands us, accepts us, delights in us, and is eager to smile at us."
