Dreaming of Lutherans

Some people dream of winning the lottery, or going on vacation to some exotic location; I dream of…Lutherans! Not every night, but about a year ago I had a dream that stuck with me. I dreamt I was invited to preach at the Lutheran church I grew up in. Now, after a recent invitation from that church’s current pastor, I am preparing my first “Lutheran sermon” to give in a couple of weeks. God works in interesting ways.

The dream was humorous. I walked into the church thinking I was well prepared, but quickly realized I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know where to sit. I didn’t know where the robes were. I had no idea when it was my time to preach, and did not have a bulletin. All of a sudden, I realized I wasn’t preaching in a Baptist church, as I’m used to. So I started to panic, and turned to my dad who was sitting in the pew behind me (my parents still go to this church). I said, “Dad, what am I going to do? I prepared a Baptist sermon, not a Lutheran one. We just write a few notes down and roll with it, but Lutherans write it out word-for-word. They even script in their jokes—I didn’t do that!” My dad’s reply was, “Jenny, you just get up there and do what God’s called you to do.”

The dream ended before I actually preached. I guess now is my opportunity to work on the happy ending. It’s interesting that just this past week the passage we were discussing in my 1 Corinthians class was about Paul becoming all things to all people. I feel like this is a good life lesson on that. You never know exactly where God will call you, and I’m thankful that I can be comfortable in different settings. And thank God for that dream, because now I can make sure that I know ahead of time what to do that day!

For now my task is to write my first sermon in English, and to be concise. All the times I’ve preached before I’ve have a 30-45 minute time slot. I was told that now I’ll have about 14. I trust that all will go well, despite my dad’s constant joking that he’s going to sit in the back row in case I embarrass him and he has to make a quick escape. I prefer to focus on his response in my dream, and remember that that God doesn’t call us to do things without helping us do them.