With trepidation I cross, on foot, the deep gray-blue waters of the Chesapeake.  I dribble a faded basketball, its cracked orange skin thrashing against the dusty blacktop of a fenced city park.  I wait atop a warehouse platform for an open-cage elevator, the noise of its mechanics amplified by the vast emptiness of the cavernous steel building.  Did I mention its merely periodic piercing of daylight does little to return life to the grayish hue of our skin?

Without assistance the colors and thoughts and words of these dreams fade until all that remains are faint images of what, otherwise, disturbed your sleep with intense symbolism.  Likewise, the dreams that arrive during daylight will, too, fade without hands to keep the story moving.

As folklore, our daydreams are expected to be passed on, growing from one generation to the next, until the stories have become so big we cannot help but live and die by their morals.  So then, shall we let the hands of a clock be used to chip away at the ice that is, today, a beautiful sculpture?  Heaven forbid it!

May the art of our dreams be kept cold with the breath of encouragement.  And, as art is a process, let that sculpture be refined by the fires of passion, whether your own single flame, or the inferno that is the compassion of many unquenched souls.

I’m ashamed to admit that the last couple days have been a little difficult.  In my mind I am supposed to be bulletproof when it comes to transition.  I am not supposed to feel lonely, or to feel like I am failing in blending into my new surroundings.  I drove down here, ready to hit the ground running, and barely missed a beat.  I was hanging with the locals in no time, eating and laughing with the best of them.

But bigger than my supposed failure as a Texan has been my failure as a Christian.  Maybe I expected, naively, that communion with God would be easier here.  If I found good fellowship, a good church home, and a nice place to live, I would pray more and read the Word more.  But, things have grown a bit dusty.

But were it all to my own credit, this battleship would have sunk long ago.  God has been pressing into me, picking at my comfort until I would just hear Him out.  And, thus, there was last night.

I woke up to a quiet darkness, the kind you only know when everyone else is asleep, including the two pit bulls behind my place.  It was just after 3 AM.  Still feeling the weight of how I’ve felt the last few days, I lifted my right arm and dropped it onto the pillow next to me, the same way your arm would fall if it had no muscles or if it was asleep.  The dead weight of my arm landed on my iPod, which sat atop the pillow, the earbuds wrapped loosely around it. And inside the iPod were the contents of the audio Bible I could somehow sense God was telling me I needed to listen to.  Searching the files brought me to Exodus 16, a chapter I don’t recall reading before.

Here, the Israelites are in the wilderness, grumbling to Moses and Aaron about their hunger, even wishing they had remained in Egypt to die.  At least there they would not have been hungry!  But God intervened, promising to rain down bread from heaven, not just to provide for them, but also to test them.  This strange residue, left on the ground after the dew had burned off, provided the perfect new ingredient for the sweet bread the Israelites could enjoy for the forty years they were in the desert.  They named the bread manna, which translates to ‘What is this?’  (This is only a small part of the story—you’ll have to read to get the rest)

As if I already didn’t realize I could relate to this story, God confirmed that he meant for me to hear this story at that moment.  I learned that God made the promise to the Israelites’ complaining hearts exactly one month after leaving Egypt.  Today, being July 14th, happens to mark the one-month point since arriving in Texas.  Friends, I am these people.  I am the Israelites.

God has promised to take care of his children.  He gives us responsibility, though.  We are still to gather the manna, but to gather only what we need for that day.  We are not to worry about tomorrow, as His promise is enough to provide for that day as well.  My needs are met through God’s promise, not through staying busy, through making lots of friends, or through any striving I can do.