Dreams and Altars

The house I’ve been dreaming of sold last Friday, and it wasn’t to us. Someone else will live across the street from the elementary school that has captured my heart. Maybe they’re the ones who will open their house up to hungry kids on Friday nights or provide a safe place for latchkey kids after school. But maybe not. Maybe they just liked the powder-blue bathroom and the metal cabinets in the kitchen.

Three weeks ago, this was so much more than a house to me. It was a dream. It was the answer to my family’s gnawing call to live among the poor. I envisioned throngs of kids running through that door. I imagined power trips to Sam’s to feed them all. I had the trampoline and the air hockey table set up in my mind; Kevin pictured basketball games in our oversized driveway. My mind had already renovated the apartment above the garage that would one day house a single mom and her kids. Or the Navigator college students who would spend their summer volunteering with Elevate at the school across the street. Hard to let go of these dreams.

But the house didn’t sell three weeks ago. It sold last week. It sold a few days after I listened to an audio message called “Death of a Dream.” The speaker was Phil Vischer, the outrageous genius who started VeggieTales, was on his way to becoming the next Walt Disney, and then watched it all crumble before his eyes. A few hours before I listened to the CD, I asked God to give me His perspective. We knew the house was under contract, and I was becoming neurotic at the thought of losing it. Later that day, as I went through the previous day’s mail, I saw a package of CDs mailed to me by a friend. Always curious about Phil Vischer’s story, I popped it in.

He said a lot of things, but this is what he said specifically to me: What’s more important to you? Loving God or loving your dream? Is it the dream you’re pursuing with all your heart, or is it your Creator? And no, it doesn’t matter if your dream involves following your God-given calling and doing all sorts of great things for Him. He doesn’t want or need your great things. He wants your heart, every bit of it, and He’s not willing to share it with your grand dreams.

Abraham had the grandest dream of all. It was more than a dream; it was actually a promise. From God Himself. God told Abraham he would have a son from whom nations would descend. Abraham surely assumed God had the wrong guy, because he didn’t have a single child. And he—and even more important, his wife—were about six decades past their child-bearing years. But God worked around that small detail and gave them a son named Isaac. And then, when Isaac was nearly grown, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, to literally kill his dreams with his own hands. We all know how the story ends. Abraham didn’t have to kill his son, but he had to be willing to. He had to put his dream on the altar and decide, “God, you’re more important to me than anything—even this boy and all he represents to me.”

What a relief that the only thing I had to lay on the altar was a not-at-all-beautiful house built in 1952. So I did. God answered my prayer for perspective quickly and unquestionably, and I got more focused on the one I love instead of on the plans I love.

The hardest part of losing the house is that I still have to park in front of it once a week when I volunteer at the school. I still have to leave all those kids to play alone on the icy sidewalk for an hour or more while they wait for someone to come pick them up. I have to accept that God’s answer for me today is, “No, not your assignment. Not now,” and I get in my car and drive away. But it’s not all bad having the altar right there in front of me. It reminds me of the one I’m waiting on, and His plans are well worth the wait.