13 January 2023
Sometimes our dreams can declare to us quite clearly what God wants from us.
Most dreams are loaded with impossible variations from reality, and aren't even internally consistent. However, dreams that tend to include your personal reality are likely more than just your brain juggling memories and fantasies around.
Last night I dreamed that the US government called up thousands of military veterans. It was some kind of military styled service. It was a time of national emergency. Something huge had changed the situation, though I could not get a clear idea what it was. None of the actual military branches wanted me because of age and physical limitations. But there was a high demand for military veterans in other government agencies, so I was herded with a bunch of other guys over to a new emergency program for "drafting" us into these other jobs.
I passed through in interview. Most of the questions were about previous work and my interests and hobbies. Some of the questions were about my political sympathies. I answered honestly that I had none, and didn't care a whit about agency agendas. The only thing that mattered to me was excellence in service.
They put me to work in some obscure agency with offices in a place like Nebraska, working with computers. In real life, I run Linux at home, and it was my familiarity with it that got me that job. It started as mundane server management stuff, but then I accidentally got involved in trying to coordinate various offices within the bureaucracy. It had to do with trying to figure out how to get the right information in the right format passed between the various offices, in which almost nobody talked to anybody else.
To be honest, this is something I would actually do. Since it was computer data, it was for me a simple matter of getting the straight story personally from the various parties and tweaking the software scripts to reformat stuff the way they wanted it. I changed the data input formats to match. Suddenly, the bureaucratic process became easier and faster. And I had zero interest in the contents of what they were processing; all I cared about was the process itself.
Don't miss the point here. It wasn't about the setting. There is no way on this earth that any government agency would draft someone my age. It would never happen. There's nothing about this that indicates God is about to use me that way. Rather, it was His way of putting me through a familiar drill so I could get a fresh look at who I am, of what my strengths and inclinations are like. If I could choose to go back and start over as a young guy entering military service, I would enlist in an entirely different field, more consistent with what my dream showed me.
Keep in mind that computers were not generally available when I first signed up. Frankly, I should have chosen to work in logistics and transportation. Had I done that in the first place, I would have enjoyed my time in uniform a whole lot more; I would have stayed longer. I spent an awful lot of time pursuing things for which God did not equip me. That dream served to help me hold a clear insight into what I should focus on for the future. I'm always looking to troubleshoot processes and find a better way to get things done.
I keep asking: Why are we doing this in the first place? What are the actual requirements here? This is how I look at religion, too. I'm forever asking the Lord for wisdom in discerning what He really wants from me, and from people in general. Don't idealize what man ought to be, but what is he, and what does he need? What is religion supposed to do?
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