God of Vision

Do you ever wake up screaming? Fuming? Crying? Do you ever wake up angry with someone you know in real life because of something they just did to you in a dream? 

You run into them in the office or in the grocery store or maybe in the kitchen while you're making breakfast, and you try to laugh it off, but there's still a little part of you that can't quite forget the experience you just sorta-kinda had with them. 

Maybe they really would do that. Maybe they want to. Maybe that's why you dreamed it. 

There's no shortage of false visions in this world, false dreams, false prophets. There's no shortage of made-up stories that get inside our heads one way or another - through our dreams, through our fears, through gossip, through propaganda and manipulation. It's hard sometimes to tell what the truth is any more. Especially in a society that tries to have you all but convinced that there's no such thing even as truth any more. 

Thankfully, we have a God who is truth, and He has told us plainly that He puts a stop to this. 

Ezekiel was a prophet, a man of God. In fact, the book that bears his name calls him that quite often - man of God. But as far as men of God go, they were a dime a dozen in Ezekiel's day (as they so often are in many days, including our own). There were plenty of men walking around claiming to have messages from God, claiming to speak truth to the people, claiming to bear a message of hope. 

And people loved that message of hope. It was certainly a welcome relief from the judgment Ezekiel was proclaiming. And, honestly, probably a bit easier to swallow. I mean, what do you make of a man who lays on his side for more than a year, nibbling from a small stash of food that is barely enough to sustain him? 

When you're the guy called to do the crazy things in a culture that's listening to the false voices just because they are more pleasant, it's easy to wonder if anyone even cares. 

But God cares. 

And God says that He will stop all the false visions. (Ezekiel 13:23)

He will stop letting the false prophets speak. He will make sure they don't have anything left to speak about. He will make it so that the people aren't listening to them any more and aren't confused, that the people can't be confused. 

Because He's going to act. 

God is going to do something so God-like, so indisputably good and gracious and loving and powerful that there won't be any false vision left that can hold even a small flicker of light because this world is going to be so lit up with God Himself, with the fullness of truth, that there won't be any room left for the lies. He puts a stop to it all. 

Kind of like how, eventually, your friend, your spouse, your sibling, whoever, loves you so thoroughly well while acting so normal and natural that it's the most obvious thing in the world that whatever you were afraid of from that false vision you had, that dream, it just vanishes. You're not mad at them any more. You're not suspicious. You remember they love you, and all is well. 

That's how it will be when God acts. All of the anger, the suspicion, the worry, the fear, the whatever...it all just goes away. Because He loves us so thoroughly, so normally, so naturally, and we recognize that love. 

And all is well.