A young man was riding his bike across a university campus with a T-shirt bearing the message, “I'm going to be a doctor.” On the back of his bike was little plaque with its own message: “I'm going to be a Mercedes.”
Everyone needs a dream. Great dreams can energize us to construct a future that is worthy of us. But in the process of relentlessly pursuing certain of our dreams, we can easily become obsessed with them and then with next step up, and the next, and the next. Our inner life can grow noisy with schemes and calculations and what-if's. And amidst gathering piles of stuff and honors and achievements, we can find our selves awash in confusion and distraction and longing for something more than our initial dreams, even when totally fulfilled, can ever provide us.
And then we hear the wise words of the prophet Zechariah: “Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the Lord!” The Lord is present in this very spot where we stand exhausted by the relentless pursuit of our dreams. And the Lord says, “Be still and know for sure that I am here, and I will not leave you. Be still and let my stillness warm and fill your soul. Be still and see that it was I you dreamed of all along.”
