A Friend's Dream In Papua New Guinea

            This is a recent communication from a friend of ours, a young lady who is living in Papua New Guinea.  For the last few months, she’s been teaching the nationals about HIV AIDS.      

            It’s 6 o’clock in the morning, and I am awake.  I had not planned to be.   In fact, it will be another half hour before my alarm goes off, telling me it’s time to prepare for my morning run, and I’ve had less than 6 hours of sleep.  Not for lack of trying mind you.  I was in bed by 11pm last night, knowing that today would be a full day, a day for errands in Mt.  Hagen, and I would need my sleep.  But I couldn’t sleep.  I didn’t know why.  Indigestion?  Excitement or anxiety over the events of tomorrow?  Another night fraught with sinus congestion due to allergies?  There were any number of plausible explanations, and I knew willing myself to sleep would not make sleep come any faster.  So I prayed that God would allow sleep to come at His will, and I waited, for over an hour I waited. Finally sleep did come, and along with it a dream, one that I feel compelled to share.

            In this dream, I was with my parents, not surprising since one of my last activities of the day had been to write emails to them.  My mother and I were walking together through a house drama, similar in style to “House of Judgment,” for those who are familiar with that genre of drama.  Each scene of the drama takes place in a different room and the audience travels from room to room, following the actors.  I do not now remember all the details of the drama, but I remember being quite impressed.  It had followed the life of a young woman and her journey.   And then came the punch line.  My mother and I were led into a final room, where we were joined by my father, whom I don’t remember traveling with us through the drama, but perhaps he was in another room.  We all sat down, I in a chair and my parents on a sofa with a wood frame.   A man came out with a little slide card, one such that you might slide through the jacket in order to match up the name of a guitar chord with the string alignment or a teacher might use to match up the number of questions with a grade allotment.  He was struggling to figure out how to use it.  It seemed that each answer we were meant to give coordinated with a next response, and on the wall was a chart where our responses would be marked and assessed.  I soon realized what was happening.  This man was trying to use this sliding card and chart to speak to us about Jesus, to give us the formula for being “saved.” In my dream, I became visibly distressed, and I could tell by the glances from my parents and the way they shifted in their seats that they too were agitated by this experience.  In unbelief, I asked the man, “Are you assessing my Christianity with a little card? Are you really trying to give me a formula for salvation?” Finally, in desperation and anger, I proclaimed, “Well, am I “Christian” enough? What do you think? Have I said all the right things? Have I done all the right things?” The man looked clearly surprised and perplexed by my questions.  Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, and looking downward, shaking his head slightly, he admitted, “I don’t know.” The tension in my countenance lessened as I looked at this man, and I asked sympathetically, with tears bristling in my eyes, “May I offer a suggestion?”  He glanced up eagerly, giving me permission to continue.  “I loved the drama,” I said, “But it was only a drama.  What I would have preferred to hear in the end was not a formula or what I must do next, but a story, a real story.  I want to know about you.  What did it mean to you? What does it mean to you?” The man looked suddenly relieved, like a deep burden had been lifted.  He said simply, “Thank you,” and then added as an afterthought, “Would you be willing to tell this to my superiors?” Enthusiastically, I proclaimed, “I would be willing to tell this to whoever you want me to!!” We walked out of the room, and I caught the eyes of my parents as I left, which glittered in agreement and support.  I then went to the front desk of what seemed to me to be a hotel, and spent much time imploring the man behind the desk to change the ending of the drama.  And just for the sake of full disclosure and as proof that this was in fact a dream with all the random absurdities of a dream, I remember my father standing in the corner of the room, completely at peace that I was taking care of the situation, enjoying a piece of chocolate cake, a delicacy I don’t eat frequently in Papua New Guinea and sometimes crave.  Yes, I implored the man behind the counter with all the passion and emotion that was within me.  But he just stood there, smiling a patronizing smile, as if listening to the whims of a small child.

            And thus I awoke, tears still pooling in my eyes.  I was in my bed, in my little house in Papua New Guinea, fully awake, though the hours of sleep had been few, and urged by an impulse to write.  It is now 6:30 am, and as I sit here in my bed, typing on my laptop, the sun is rising over the mountains.  The morning chill has started to numb my fingers, but I could not begin my day without writing this.

            I leave you with this appeal.  Christianity is not a formula.  It is not something we do.   It is not a set of rituals, or saying the right prayer, or speaking the magic words, or believing something rightly enough that it might possibly earn you a ticket to heaven.  How dare we reduce it to such! How dare we judge others based on our criteria of what is right! No, Christianity is about a relationship, an experience of God reaching to your heart, through no power, strength, or action of your own.  If you are going to speak of anything, if you are going to share anything, speak of what Christ has done in your life.  Speak of that moment or that lifetime of moments when you realized that you weren’t enough, that you needed the hand of a loving God in your life, and it was there.  It doesn’t have to be a single moment or a visibly life-changing “I was a drug addict, and now I’m clean” kind of moment.  It just has to be your moment, your experience.   Speak of that.  And leave the judgment, formulas, and attempt to do all the right things to others.  There’s enough of that in the world… sadly.