"I have a new hope, that blows away the small hopes I knew before. That at the end of the day I am Yours." I just downloaded some new music as I was up for something new. So I at the suggestion of a friend, I checked out Sara Groves' new CD. This morning I got into a pretty intense conversation with someone dear to me and we were talking about dreams. If you know me, you know that I am hopelessly a dreamer. I mean, I walked out of the theater in high school after watching "Little Women" with my mom and best friend absolutely disgusted with the ending because I thought that Jo should have ended up with Laurie-he had dreamed of it for so long. In my mind, I knew the happy ending and I was devestated when it didn't happen. It's been a lot of years since then and I have come to love that movie and watch it every Christmas. I have realized that life doesn't always turn out how we had planned. It takes all sorts of twists and turns. Some painful and some suprisingly wonderful, but all with a purpose. The other day I was talking to a buddy of mine about some things upcoming in his future and I said, "life is too short and too serious and too many things go wrong not to have some of our dreams." The hopeless dreamer in me says that if a dream is attainable and God-honoring, we ought to go for it, even if it seems ridiculous. The realist voice in the back of my mind (yes, there really is one!) says that I should keep my feet firmly planted in reality and stick with what makes the most sense...but I'm not a realist. Just ask my mom. :) Dreams and hope go hand in hand in my mind. If I couldn't dream and reach for those, hope would be pointless. But as Sara Groves said in her song "I have a new hope, that blows away all the small hopes I knew before." The Bible says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." That is true and the curse of the dreamer...but at the end of the day, we are still Jesus' kids...and He won't withhold any good thing from His children. But the hope lies in that He knows what is best...my dreams may be small and disappointing to me when they are not fulfilled...but He has big dreams for me and as He fulfills them, I realize that they are so much more than anything I could have ever thought to hope for.