Worshiping while Wilted

What do you do with dying dreams?

I have a vintage copy of a book of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which I found at a yardsale when I was a teenager. At the top of the cover page is a signature and a date of when it was gifted to a previous owner. What caught my attention the most, though, was the wilted flower – a carnation, I think – pressed inside the front cover. I wonder what the story is behind this flower. Was it gifted by the person who gifted the book, or was it someone else? Did a young couple read Barrett’s poems before dates? Or did a young woman simply scurry around for some book, any book, in which to press her flower? Whatever the case, this flower has long been dead, but it still gives joy, wonder, and mystery because it was lovingly saved.

Fall brings the time for gratefulness, but it is also a time of death, a reminder of the deaths that are part of life as time passes. Dead hopes and dreams; sometimes they seem so thick, they could make a carpet of wilted flowers to crunch underfoot.

In the disappointing times of life, I have a choice to make. I can stay in that place, crunching those wilting remnants of dreams under my feet, or I can pluck one of them up and lift it up to the one who created it, the one who treasures it. I imagine him gently taking that wilted dream and placing it in his book where it will be a reminder of the joy and the worship in which it was birthed. And I will continue to worship.

Dear Father, thank you for dreams. Thank you for the joy and the hope that you give. And thank you that they never truly have to die, only be given to you to be molded into something new. Thank you that you are a personal God, one who holds us close in difficult times. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Throughout this Day: Ask yourself, how can you trust God with your hopes and dreams today?

Additional Resource: Here is a resource on disappointment: https://thelife.com/devotionals/when-life-happens