The Dream

I had the finest of dreams, or was it a vision of sorts? One recent afternoon, while I was about my daily routines, a tiredness fell over me, and I laid down for just a moment, a catnap perhaps, a moment of rest. In that in-between time of sleep and wakefulness, I suddenly saw/dreamt of a woman, a beautiful, lovely woman, wrapped up in gossamer folds of some type, her body covered, but her face and hair fully exposed. Her hair was long, dark and luxurious, it was stirring, as if touched by a breeze. Her eyes were glowing and captivating, and I realized she was familiar to me. Love, pure love, suddenly crossed her face. I have only seen this pure, face-altering love in children, my sons, my grandchildren. They would catch sight of me, sometimes from afar, and love would alter their expression, in a way that is hard to describe, but once you’ve experienced it, you never forget the gift of that moment. I suddenly realized the beautiful woman was my grandmother who ‘fell asleep in the Lord’ several years ago at age ninety-three. She was altered, transformed, but recognizable too. I suddenly realized the perfect reality of the verse in the Bible—

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. I Thessalonians 4:15-18

When those who have ‘fallen asleep’ rise again, when the Lord wakens them, when the trumpet of God sounds, they shall rise first. We who are alive will then be caught up with them and meet our Lord in the air…we shall be with the Lord through eternity.

Did I dream of my grandmother transformed because of watching the butterflies transforming? I think it factored into it. I was concentrating on what was admirable and lovely by watching caterpillars transform and fly away with the beautiful blue of sky as a backdrop. God gives us a clue, I think, of how perfect his transforming power is in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar. I feel blessed to have witnessed these beautiful moments, the transforming of the butterflies, and a blessed reminder of the Rapture in a dream