Ask for Help.
In the Christmas story the wise men are looking for the baby Jesus by following a star in the sky. In their effort to find him, they stop and ask for directions at the palace of King Herod. King Herod is not very happy that a new king is being born and he really doesn’t help the wise men out at all. In fact, he asks the wise men to tell him the location of Jesus after they find him so that he could in fact have him killed and his throne kept secure. The wise men are warned in a dream by God not to return to Herod because Herod’s intentions are not good. Herod in his anger at being deceived by the wise men actually has every baby boy under the age of 2 killed in Bethlehem so that any threat to his throne is eliminated. Unknown to him though Jesus is on his way to Egypt, again through a message of God in a dream to his parents. Herod is not stupid enough to challenge the authority of the Pharaoh of Egypt and so Jesus has a chance at staying alive to achieve his purpose in life.
What can we learn from this story? The answer is God is always willing help even if we do not reach out to him at first. Many spiritual people believe that God sends messages to them in dreams and not everything that is written in the bible is pure fairytale. Why isn’t God able to communicate through dreams? Just because we might not be able to as humans doesn’t mean that he isn’t able. In an article in Psychology Today written by Preston NI in October 2020 he explains the nature of different types of dreams. Two of the seven types that stand out to me are ‘Supernatural’ dreams and ‘Creative or Problem Solving’ dreams. Did you know that Paul McCartney, the Beetles singer and song writer dreamed of a melody which became the song “Yesterday”, and Nobel Prize laureate James Watson had a dream about snakes which led to devising the structure of DNA? I didn’t know either. These are two famous examples of creative dreams.
Supernatural dreams take a different format. Some examples are premonition dreams where the dreamer has a vision of a future event which later becomes true. Then there are telepathic dreams when the dreamer receives communication about a person or an event occurring elsewhere without the dreamer’s waking knowledge. After the dreamer awakes, details of the dream are verified to be true. Another popular one is visitation dreams in which a recently deceased family, friend, partner, or pet appear. Have any of these ever happened to you? I am interested to hear about them.
As exam time rolls around again why not add an extra study weapon to your arsenal. Why not pray to God and ask him to help you to understand a difficult concept or to help you with your exam anxiety or to motivate a friend to study together with you? Maybe he will send the answer, solution or instruction in a dream.
Amen.