A parable - through a dream

A very dear friend of mine shared with me her dream.  She didn't realize until the end of the dream that it was about her life.  She has had some unusual challenges.  It wasn't until I finished reading the dream that I realized this parable was for me.  Then I realized it is a parable that you may also find applicable in your life.

 

I dreamed a parable.  There was a boy in an English class whose teacher told them to write a paragraph in one period.  It was a weighty assignment and the boy knew he needed to do his best.  He didn’t even have a piece of paper so he asked the teacher for a piece and was turned down.  He searched through his notebook and finally found a piece of paper that had only doodling across the top.  He hoped the teacher wouldn’t mind the sketches, and perhaps would even like them. 

So he started writing.  The words flowed to him easily, and he was surprised because he felt it was really turning into something very good.  But he was using a little stub of a pencil and the brilliant words were looking pretty shabby, and hard to read.  Some other boys came into the room and created a big disturbance and made it difficult for the boy to continue writing. 

Near the end of class, the teacher asked the boy to read his paragraph.  Even though it wasn’t completely written down, the boy read the paragraph out loud.  Both the teacher and the students were obviously moved by the paragraph.  The bell rang and the teacher took the incomplete paragraph from the boy and left.

The boy was determined to get his words down and to turn it in to the teacher.  So he looked for another piece of paper.  His girl friend came to him and was telling him about something very important to her and stomped away in a huff because he was so distracted.  But it was very important to him to get this paragraph that was in his mind down on paper. 

He found a small label machine which required searching for each letter and choosing it.  It would be very laborious to get anything down this way, but he decided that it would be worth it.  So he spent the next hour putting down his sentences letter by letter.  For some reason, between each word it printed formatting words in green like “hard return” or “capitalization.” 

When he was finished he took the paper to his teacher.  The teacher looked at the two pages, one with sketches across the top, written in blunt, scratchy pencil, and the other with bright green formatting indications between each word. 

The boy thought that the teacher would probably not even take the trouble to read his paragraph in this state of disarray.  But the look on the teacher’s face told the boy of the teacher’s reaction.  His teacher valued his words very highly, not only for their brilliant content, but also because of what it took for the boy to write it down and get it to him. 

When I woke, I was told that this dream was a parable for mortality.  The fall made it very difficult for us to express and to fulfill the magnificent things that are inside us from before we were born.  Every righteous thing we try to accomplish is much more difficult than it would have been in other circumstances.  But even though the product may turn out less than we desire, our loving Father looks at what it cost us to do, and He recognizes the pure grain of truth and beauty in what we have accomplished.  He treasures not only our effort, but the beautiful person we are including who we were before we were born, who we have become here in this life, and all we will become and do in the eternal worlds ahead.