One afternoon our whole family was having a swim in the creek just outside the village. I left first and our 10-year-old daughter Leanne decided to leave a minute later sprinting up the trail to catch up with me. As she rounded a bend, she nearly ran into a long grey stick propped between bushes about waist high, barring the trail. Oh, daddy is having fun with me, she thought, as she grabbed the stick to clear the path. Instantly the long grey snake wrapped itself around her arm and bit her.
She screamed, shook the snake off her arm, and raced back to the creek crying, “A snake bit me! A snake bit me!
When Jo heard Leanne scream, she instantly remembered dreaming this scene the night before—a dream she had forgotten. “It was like God was telling me, ‘Don’t worry. Be calm. I know all about this snake,’” Jo said later. She soothed Leanne and led the girls home. It did turn out alright; the snake either was not poisonous or God intervened and saved her.
What is it with dreams?
The Bible mentions dreams or visions over 220 times. Matthew begins his story of Jesus by telling of Joseph’s four dreams: 1) It’s okay to marry Mary. 2) Take your family to Egypt. 3) Go back to Israel. 4) Go live in Galilee, and one dream of the Wise Men: Go home without telling Herod about Jesus. Five dreams in the first thirty verses!
People took dreams seriously back in those days.
Even today, many non-western people take dreams seriously. Large numbers of Muslims in Iran are turning to Jesus. One third of these testify that a dream about Jesus telling them, “I am the way to God” had prepared them. This astounds people like me who explain vivid dreams by blaming the spicy food we ate the night before.
Dreams don’t astound Canela people. A popular early morning greeting is, “What did you dream?” One of our Canela friends and helpers started getting drunk on sugar cane rum every time he went into town. The Canelas elders’ council lectured him and shamed him but nothing helped. We prayed for him for years. One day we returned to the village from a two-month-workshop in the city and he told us he had stopped drinking after having a dream.
“’Do you want to stop drinking?’ a man up in the sky asked me. I told him I did. ‘Every morning take a large cup of cold water, go outside, look into the sky, think about me, and drink it down in one long swallow.’ I have been doing that for two months. One day in town someone offered me a drink of cane rum and when I smelled it I ran outside because I nearly vomited.”
