Don’t Make Your Children’s Dreams Come True This Christmas

If you believe all the commercials and holiday specials, Christmas is about making dreams come true. Funny, no one told Jesus. He didn’t come to work for Walt Disney; He came to fulfill His Father’s will.

Ask Mary. It wasn’t her dream to start her married life under a cloud of suspicion. Ask Joseph. It wasn’t his dream to have his friends wonder if he was a fornicator or a chump. It wasn’t this young couple’s dream to spend years running and hiding from a powerful and angry king. Nor was it the dream of families in Judea to watch Herod’s soldiers kill their infant sons.

Jesus didn’t come to make dreams come true. He came to teach us to dream better dreams.

He arrived a poor child, so we knew He understood the pain of going without. He endured rejection, suffering, and trials so we knew He had walked in our shoes.

He was misunderstood, betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, and humiliated. Those He loved abandoned Him. He faced an unjust conviction and died at the hands of arrogant and manipulative blind guides – while His mother watched.

Christmas isn’t about dreams – not the dreams we normally dream.

It’s a celebration of God’s love for us made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. God came and lived with us. That wasn’t a dream; it was real.

And it wasn’t about making our dreams come true. It was about delivering us from the lesser dreams of this world, so we are free to dream eternal dreams.

He is the originator of dreams, the great Dream Weaver, but we have come under the curse of one who convinced us to trade our glory for lesser dreams. That is why we spend the holidays at Target, but still feel as if we’re missing the bull’s eye.

If you love your children this Christmas, don’t work to make their dreams come true. Rather, teach them to dream the best dream – that of a life with Jesus Christ –

a life where they discover their true name, where they realize their original and glorious design, where they know they are seen and loved by the God who calls them to step into His idea of them – an idea bigger than the galaxies, the Aurora Borealis, the nations, and all art, music, and science combined.

Jesus stands ready to wake them from the sleep of sin, so they can realize the dream of a life set free and embrace the truest dream of entering an eternal story where love and adventure never end.

We all want the best for our children. Wise men still know to seek it in the place most of the world would never dream to find it.

Don’t Make Your Children’s Dreams Come True This Christmas https://t.co/eA2ctnA0ou #amwriting #Christmas

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) December 7, 2017