Broken Promises and Broken Dreams

At heart, we are all dreamers. We dream that we shall succeed, that we shall be liked or loved, that we shall be happy. And the journey of life is strewn with the wreckage of dreams.

The old darling in the retirement home, whose children never come to see her, though she gave them everything and expected they would care for her in her latter years. The couple who married, wishing to be together for the rest of their lives, and the marriage ends in a terrible divorce.

The mother and father of a child who saved every penny they earned to send their child to a university to earn a law degree, only to receive a call to find he or she committed suicide. Or the community church which was struck with a devastating fire, destroying the structure to ashes.

What do you do when it happens to you, when the deal you had hoped for falls through, when the love of your life walks out and slams the door, when the house of your dreams burns down and you didn't have any insurance, when the policeman comes to your door and tells you your child is in jail for selling cocaine or, even worse, that she was killed in an accident on the highway?

What do you do when your dreams suddenly fall apart and you know there is no putting them together again?

I was reading a few weeks ago, Luke 19:44 and it came to me how Jesus knew at the moment what was about to take place, the job he was sent to do. The story of His so-called "triumphal" entry into Jerusalem. It looks as if His dreams have all come true -- the big crowds, the shouting, the royal reception with palm branches and clothing strewn in the road.

But He knew better.

He knows the politics of the time, the intrigue of His enemies, the fickleness of the crowds. He knows the demonstration is only a momentary celebration, and that beneath it are the deceit and treachery that had kept His people in bondage for centuries. While the others are smiling and shouting and waving their palm branches, He is weeping, and sees it all through tears.

How many times have you had individuals lay palm branches out for you, only to turn around and whip you in the back with them. Politicians make promises to you in order to receive your vote, but after the polls close and they are elected, you recieve the "Hello, here is a pen with my name on it" and "I will look into it." A young man or woman is arrested by some dirty cop, who puts a case on them only to look good and get promoted. While your child serves time or gains a record for something he really did not do.

Well, this is a prime example of broken promises and broken dreams.

What did Jesus do when He saw this? Maybe it would help us in dealing with our own broken dreams if we could only see what He did. He did three things, as well as we can tell.

First, He held on to His faith in the sovereignty of God. He continued to believe that God knew what He was doing and that God would work things out the way God wanted them to work. That is a big step to take, and it is not usually an easy one. Our first inclination, when things go wrong with our dreams, is to turn on God, to say that God must not be there at all or God wouldn't permit things to go this way for us.

Maybe Jesus did this at first. We don't know. But we do know that He couldn't have done it for long. He went right on with His ministry, teaching and healing and trusting that God knew what God was doing, even if things didn't turn out the way He wanted them to.

People ever since have found inspiration in Jesus' faith, in His holding on to belief in God's power even when God wasn't exercising it in His behalf. The woman who loses her job, the man whose wife just died in an operation, the young person who feels that he or she is not making any headway in life naturally becomes angry with God and says, "What good have all my prayers been?" Or Law Enforcement who deals with a person's past, but never pay attention to the individual's correction of life.

"Why should I bother being religious if you don't help me when I need you?" I bet that sounds like so many of us! Right?

Jesus held on to His faith in the sovereignty of God, and He prayed and submitted Himself to the will of the Father. That's what the whole business of Gethsemane was about -- "Not my will, but thy will be done." Only it didn't begin in Gethsemane. It had been going on for a long time before that. Luke says that when they went to Gethsemane that night to pray, it was their "custom." They prayed somewhere like that every night.

"You gotta have heart!" It isn't the property of the Rambos of the world; it's the quality of a lot of little people, a lot of quiet people who know how to suffer and keep going. People who are barely making it as teachers or nurses or social workers. People who are taking care of sick parents or retarded children. People who are living with alcoholics or drug addicts. People whose dreams fell around their feet a long time ago, but they just keep slogging along, like good foot-soldiers in the military.

Jesus knew what was coming for Him. He knew that the fair day on Palm Sunday would give way to the stormy night before the cross. He knew His friends would desert Him. He knew He would be hung out like the pelt of an animal exposed to all the world and alone with His pain.

The same way Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and so many others who paved the way. But one thing each one had in common is their desire to keep going.

When you have been challenged, talked about, attack on finances and marriage. When you have been broken. Think of how Christ took everything from the beatings, name calling, backstabbing to the Cross. When he rose, he was new and those things in the past life died at that cross also.

Now I ask you to leave your broken promises and broken dreams at your cross and come out into your new.

I pray for your encouragement and strength.