Memories

I had a dream last night.  I haven’t been remembering many dreams lately.  Not sure if there’s any significance to this one, but here it is, for the interested reader to interpret.

I dreamed that I had traveled a long way and gone to a lot of trouble to meet Jesus.  When I got to the place where he was supposed to be, he was gone.  It seemed that no one knew where he was, and I had just missed him.  The man was nowhere to be found, but I did encounter the people who had known him.

Oh, and they had a box of memorabilia:  a few pictures and a whole bunch of thank-you letters that other people had written to him.  Yes, and fan mail.  One letter was even from me.  In my dream, as I looked at the letter I had written and I thought about the excitement I had felt at the prospect of meeting him, I began to weep with disappointment.  I felt such loss that I have a tear in my eye from just typing that sentence.

In one sense this is the plight of the modern believer.  We are trying to follow Jesus.  To find him, although most of us aren’t ready to see him just yet:)  And all we have to go by is the word of others.  Some fan mail, some thank you letters, some people’s efforts to “write an orderly account.”

I’m sure the answer is that we find Jesus in each other and that the church is “the body of Christ.”  But still it feels sometimes like I have just missed him, can’t find him, and don’t know where to look.