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Paul Arden said that risk is not compatible with age. Thus, you take fewer and fewer risks as you age. Safety and predictability are the stuff of grown-ups, while courage and uncertainty are the fuel of younger ones. Give the youth a challenge and they grab it with both hands. Give the same challenge to adults, and they will form a committee who will formally tell you it is an impossible task… after months of investigation! Children take risk. Concern for their own honor does not cause a fear of failure in them. They are small enough to be free. That is why children are among the favorite people of Jesus (Matthew 19). That is why He warned that if we don’t become like them, we will never see the inside of God’s kingdom (Matthew 18:1-4).

Let’s grow smaller to be bigger! How? Well, do you remember the name of the title song of the film Man of La Mancha about Don Quixotte? The impossible dream! The lyrics are moving: To dream the impossible dream. To fight the unbeatable foe. To bear with unbearable sorrow. To run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong. That’s what an adventure sounds like! How many of us have such an inextinguishable sense of purpose to wake up to in the morning? If you truly know that Christ is your reason for getting up and your life-fuel, then you grow simultaneously more courageous and smaller in the right direction. He is your only life, hope and joy. You will climb high mountains with Him. In his name you want to serve others, address injustice, relieve need, and tread new tracks of righteousness. Even if you do it solo, you will still want to shout the Lord’s goodness from mountaintops.

Prayer guideline

Read and pray through Matthew 18 this week. Integrate it into your life.

Jesus’ first resting place here on earth was a manger. What a strange place to start his journey! It brought his speed way down. Suddenly, divine speed was much slower than ever. At the beginning of time God only had to slow down from eternity speed to walking speed when he did his first grace walk with Adam and Eve. But Jesus was way slower than this when he entered the world. He came as a weak baby in a manger. He came at sleeping speed. He had to be carried around at first. Jesus literally crawled into the world. He did grace at the slowest pace possible. At the same time, Jesus’ childhood town was Nazareth, a one horse town tucked away somewhere in the forgotten hills of Galilee. His disciples were a bunch of lowly fishermen and money swindling tax collectors. His followers included lowly tax collectors, sinners, women, children, the poor, the downtrodden — you name them!

To dream with one’s eyes wide open is expensive. Sometimes it’s highly dangerous actually. Jesus’ dream cost him his divine speed, his heavenly glory, his crown, his heavenly garments, the adoration of the angels, the safety and warmth of his Father’s heavenly dwelling, and eventually also his life. Jesus was downwardly mobile. He went from divine riches to sinners’ rags because he dared to realize his dreams to change the world. That’s why Jesus exchanged his heavenly crown for an earthly crown of thorns. He traded his heavenly garments for the dirty rags of a slave. He became a servant of the poorest of the poor and a slave to outcasts.

Learn from Jesus to dream with you eyes wide open. While doing this, take cognizance of the words of T. E. Lawrence who says: “All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.”

Apparently, it was Goethe who said that you should never dream small dreams since it has no power to move the hearts of other people. But what is a big dream? According to many it is to have more… more money, more possessions, more stuff on your name. The dilemma is that such dreams only has to do with things that have an expiry date on their worth. That’s why the teachings of Jesus inspire me so much. His dream for this world is one where people give away and sacrifice. His biggest dream, one that He Himself lived out in word and deed, happens when people give themselves unselfishly as living sacrifices for God and others. Awesome that this dream still changes people all over the earth.

written by Jacques Bornman

I’m a keen musician. No, wait maybe musician is too strong a word. I’m a keen impersonator of a musician. Anyway, it was at the piano, in a dance of black and white keys, that the thought came to me: The heart is a guitar. An instrument of beauty, inspiration and most of all love. Each with its own tone, each responding differently to touch and feel, with the capacity to make soul-music — taking us to places words alone cannot reach.

Music cannot be manufactured. It takes time and discipline. Yes, standard progressions, useful techniques and agreed-upon time signatures all exist. But you cannot prescribe one formula to create and fit all music. The mystery and the attraction of music is that two pieces of music in exactly the same key can sound worlds apart when played in different styles and with different instruments. We often falter here in trying to help others. In an effort to ‘manufacture’ and guarantee growth and life, we reduce it to ‘three easy steps’ and ‘how-to’.

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