A Vision

2001

I was in Myrtle Beach when I had something like a dream or a vision. I can even remember the pictures in my mind. But I don’t remember what form they came in, but it doesn’t matter because I think I’ve tried to learn the lesson since then. I talked to some guys at dinner that night about it. But in this sleepy, sleepy dream or vision of some sort, there was a garden and a variety of plants. I remember having very little interest in it. And then at some point I shifted to where I had a great deal of intense interest in it and I poured myself into cultivating and caring for and learning everything I could about it all, and someone asked me, “Why do you care so much?” And the answer that I had for them was, “Because the One who died cared so much. It’s my obligation to have the same heart for it that He did.”

I was kind of teary, even when I was retelling it. I remember tearing up at the table at dinner in Myrtle Beach. I remember feeling strong emotions at the time, and I’ve tried to live my life that way since then. “Hey, I could care less about this plant. This is a pain in the neck. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t care anything about it, but somehow I have to get my emotions involved in it, because the One who died and left this to me as an inheritance, this is His stuff, and He has entrusted it to me. So it’s not a matter of tolerating it. It’s surely not to be neglected or forgotten.

Beyond all of that, is, that’s part of what it means, “the goal of this commandment is love, that we have a pure heart.” A pure heart is to have the same affection for it that He does. So I poured myself into it, and just sobbed over these plants and loved on these plants that I thought were stupid and worthless and had no particular value. And if they were green vegetables, I would never have eaten them. It had absolutely nothing to do with me; no desirability at all, and yet I made my heart to feel the same tears, to feel the same joy, to feel the same love over this garden that the One who left it to me and entrusted it to me had.

There have been a couple of key issues in my life where I have done that same thing to myself. I have made myself have a pure heart over areas that perhaps I didn’t start that way necessarily. But as I saw how He viewed it I brought my heart totally into being submersed in all the same feelings that He has. There’s no greater satisfaction, no greater joy in the world than that. It seems costly on the front end, but there’s tremendous value in it.