The Essence of Dreams

A church member sent me this daily devotional:

September 9, 2005
Daily Devotional

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

All my life I’ve longed to own a little red pickup truck, but I could never afford it on my teacher’s salary. “Besides,” I admitted to my wife, “I don’t actually need a truck—I have nothing to haul.”
One day, on my way home from work, I spotted a small, red ’89 Dodge Ram 50 truck sitting on the Common Sense Cars lot, with $600 printed in large white numbers on the windshield.This is no showpiece. It has more dents than the moon. At 170,000 miles, it uses oil and it struggles to reach fifty miles per hour in a tailwind. It’s fully equipped with nothing, not even a radio.Then why do I love it so much? Because it’s red and it’s mine. I paid only four hundred dollars for it, so I don’t need costly insurance. I don’t worry about it getting dinged—one more dent would never be noticed. And, to my amazement, I’ve found a thousand things to haul.I was wrong. I need this truck. Something deep in my soul needed proof that dreams can come true this side of heaven, if I’m willing to modify them a bit. When I reduce my dreams to their absolute essence, there is hope.It reminds me of a friend of ours who wanted a baby more than anything in the world, but couldn’t get pregnant. Now she and her husband are the happy parents of a little girl, adopted from Taiwan.

What’s your dream? If you’re willing to settle for its essence, you may find that somewhere on this side of the rainbow, skies are blue.

Lord, I love You for giving me this truck, at last.

By Daniel Schantz

And Lord, thank You for giving us our daughter, at last.