{"id":10376,"date":"2014-12-27T09:13:21","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T17:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=10376"},"modified":"2014-12-27T13:28:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-27T21:28:25","slug":"a-dream-at-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2014\/12\/27\/a-dream-at-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dream at Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"christmas-dream\"<\/a><\/h6>\n

The other night I had a dream, long, weird, and a bit fearful.
\nI felt we were living in ominous times.
\nI was in America but a weakened version.
\nIt was like God had once been blessing but we’d turned away.
\nA foreign power had taken over, our leaders were their vassals.
\nTheir solders were everywhere.
\nAnd now we were even forced to pay\u00a0taxes to this foreign country.<\/p>\n

Internally, things weren’t much better.
\nAny vestige of spiritual leadership had gone pretty powerless, without faith, or even belief.
\nOur political leadership kept up a show of such, but you couldn’t tell.
\nAnything of God seemed far distant, of another age, and not relevant.<\/p>\n

In the dream I was something of a long distance trucker.
\nI had a girlfriend, maybe we were married . . .\u00a0she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

This one night she was with me and we were driving late.
\nIt was very clear, full of stars, and very cold.
\nThen the heater went out.\u00a0There would be no sleeping in the truck.
\nThat night, of all nights, we could not find one motel with a vacancy.
\nIt was just bad luck.<\/p>\n

Then as if everything possible was going wrong, labor pains began.
\nI was stressed beyond stress, alone, with nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

Right then a door opened with a\u00a0brilliant light and a woman’s voice:
\n“Wake up, it’s Christmas, and breakfast is on the table.”<\/p>\n

That, of course, was my wife in real life. I’d been dreaming.<\/p>\n

After that it was all noise and children with\u00a0presents and pretty wrappings strewn everywhere.\u00a0It was the merriest moment of the holiday described by that name.<\/p>\n

But not so the original occasion. Mystery, maybe, with angels and strange announcements, shepherds showing up with accounts of having seen a vision en masse,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0academes from distant realms presenting opulent gifts and bowing down at a feed trough.<\/p>\n

Then there were dreams, like Joseph’s warning of baby killers coming, which would not be a dream.<\/p>\n

Actually mine wasn’t either,\u00a0but related for a point . . . that the original Christmas, while very special, was not merry, more like scary.<\/p>\n

But it happened, and that it did changed everything, and became a great comfort for all mankind.<\/p>\n

Peace on your earth this season, and those to come.<\/p>\n

______
\nPS \u00a0I’ll be speaking on these things and more this evening and tomorrow morning at Capo Beach Church<\/a>. Click link for times and location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not everybody’s Christmas is merry, including for the original participants. But there’s comfort in spades. Also see here for my speaking this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10376"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10407,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376\/revisions\/10407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}