Fantasies

 Like waking up from the longest dream

How real it seemed
Until Your love broke through
I've been lost in a fantasy
That blinded me
Until Your love broke through  -  Keith Green

I was in a strip mall the other day when I came across a large group of people, mostly in their 20's gathered outside a video game store. Many were sitting in camp chairs, waiting for the store to open. I'd seen this same scene before when some new video game was being offered, and people were rushing to be among the first to purchase it. I was amazed, as I always am, that so many people would be so invested in giving so much energy and attention to something that wasn't real, that was a fantasy. I remember when these games were marketed as "virtual reality." The emphasis was on how the game made everything seem so real, even if it wasn't. There's teaching and wisdom for us here if we're willing to see and listen.

Keith Green's song, Your Love Broke Through was one of the first I became familiar with after I met Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The lyrics are powerful and I identified with them so strongly. In Scripture, a blind man given sight by Jesus is asked by the Pharisees to explain just who Jesus was. The man said that he was no scholar but that he could declare this; "Once I was blind, but now I see." That's exactly how I felt after coming to the King. I was seeing what I had been blind to for so long. I was seeing how all of my life had been given over to seeking pleasure and fulfillment in a world system that was passing away. Seeking what could only be temporary and never retained in eternity. I was pursuing the fantasy that I could fill the emptiness of my life with relationships, pleasure, drugs, entertainment, and on and on. I pursued this fantasy with all my heart and all I came to was the reality that none of them provided lasting joy. It all came to a head on the floor of an apartment crowded with fellow partiers, with me surrounded by people yet feeling completely alone. I had no idea that even then His love and grace was pursuing me, and a few weeks later, as it did for Green, His love broke through. I woke up from my own "longest dream" to the reality of Christ, and life has never been the same since.

All of us pursue fantasies in this life. Success in our professions, possessions, in relationships, in sex, in a seemingly infinite array of addictions and habits. None satisfy for long. We're always longing for something more, but we're blind to the reality that the something more is Him, who all the while is pursuing us. Who, if you don't yet know Him, is pursuing you.

What fantasies, even as a believer, have you been lost in? All those young people clamoring for the newest game, will soon be back at the store clamoring for the next newest game. So will you, in one way or another, until His love breaks through to you. I pray that it will now. May the fantasies you've been lost in end and the reality of His wonder be yours. May His love and grace break through to you.

Blessings,
Pastor O