I was bouncing along a dirt road in Thailand in the back of a pickup truck with a half dozen other young adults. We were traveling between a couple of schools in which we were performing some dramas explaining what Jesus meant to us and then breaking up into small groups to play games and teach English.
We had been doing the same thing for days and the pace was exhausting. One of the things that kept us going strong was Nathan’s infectious joy. He was at it again, laughing and telling a story with all of our eyes on him as he sat on the tailgate. He let go of the side panel to illustrate a point in his story and we hit a pothole … a common enough occurrence on this trip. With a big difference this time.
This time Nathan fell backwards off of the bed of the truck and his head split open like a watermelon. I woke up from the nightmare with the sound of wailing and the screams of my teammates in my ears.
The thing was … I wasn’t in Thailand and had no plan to be there and I had never met any of the faces I had seen in my dream before. Remembering what had happened with Jason, and with a similar burden, I rolled out of bed and started to pray, assuming I was praying for a team somewhere half a world away. After fifteen minutes or so I felt better and went back to sleep. I wrote to my penpal about it the next day and then promptly forgot about it.
A number of years later I was in Thailand with a bunch of new friends in the back of a pickup truck on our way to a school to share about Jesus. The joker in the group was sitting on the tailgate telling a story … but I couldn’t enter into it. I was too distracted by a memory just outside my grasp. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I remembered it just as we hit a huge pothole opening my eyes and shouting out a warning. Nathan grinned a quizzical look back at me holding onto the sideboard with one hand and steadying himself.
“Get off the tailgate.”
I said it with a little more authority to my voice then I would usually use.
Nathan grimaced at my tone, but since the last bump had been a little more dangerous than any he’d experienced yet he complied.
As I apologized for my tone and explained what I had just remembered his grimace turned into a look of surprise as looked at the stony ground behind us.
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Have you ever had a dream that felt like more than a dream?
What’s a time when God did something out of the ordinary to get your attention?
Thanks for reading!
Rusty
The Good Argentumware. 