I continue unpacking the Freedom dream. In this post I deal with the part where I get alongside Rosemary who is blind.
I have often wondered why she was chosen by my sleeping brain. Of all the elements within the dream I spent the most time considering who she is and what she represented (and still do!)
At the point I had this dream Rosemary was someone who I used to pray with as a prayer partner after the church service. People would come to us and ask for prayer and we would listen and then pray. Hold that thought as I think that it is significant. It relates to getting alongside someone and partnering with them.
Rosemary means dew of the sea. Dew is an interesting topic in itself. I went off on a tangent to consider it and some of the associated Bible passages.
I think it’s good to relate your dreams to the Bible though not in a contrived way. If something comes to me naturally in relation to what I’m looking at in a dream I follow that path in my thinking.
One of the main passages that came to me early on thinking about the dream is the one below and it relates to harmony or unity. Hopefully you’ll see the significance of this as I continue writing:
The People of God Dwell in Unity
Psalm 133 LEB
A song of ascents. Of David.
Look, how good and how pleasant it is
when brothers dwell together in unity.
It is like the fragrant oil upon the head,
running down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron,
that runs down upon the edges of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon that runs down
upon the mountains of Zion,
because there Yahweh commanded the blessing—
life forever.
Logos 8 Bible Software
Off course the other thing about Rosemary is that it is also a herb. A herb that is symbolic of remembrance. A herb that signifies loyalty, friendship and forgiveness.
When I first had the dream I looked at these various ways of seeing Rosemary due to the fact that the dream was so compelling. Rosemary is these things:
- is about remembering,
- is about loyalty,
- brings taste and fragrance to the table,
- prays (she was my prayer partner),
- partners,
- brings refreshing as she is a symbol of dew.
- is creative (remember she was a flower arranger).
- is my full potential, that which I aim towards.
- She is initially blind but she has her eyes opened. (Remember the Ps 133 connection – the idea of unity or wholeness, symbolised by oil on the beard and the dew descending on the mountain).
We’re all broken in some way. I was broken by the situation I was in. I knew I had wronged my wife. There was a specific circumstance and it was affecting other areas in my life.
Things happen in life and we can and do make wrong choices. I am grateful to God that he gave me an opportunity to be forgiven. The dream conveys more than just forgiveness of one particular failing. As it is set in a group setting it conveys that forgiveness is for everyone not just for me and forgiveness is for all of our sins.
Sin is that which misses the mark, not just moral failure but that which makes us inhuman. It also conveys the idea of being sold into slavery!
Sin separates us from God, yet the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus has made it possible for us to be repatriated with God. We can now enter God’s presence if we believe in Jesus and are loyal to him. We now, in him can hit the mark.
‘…in whom we have redemption* through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace,…’
Ephesians 1:7
Logos 8 Bible Software
*ἀπολύτρωσις. ransoming, deliverance, liberation (from captivity). ransoming away, emancipation, manumission (of a slave by his master)
Logos 8 Bible Software
In one of the previous posts I elaborated about freedom and forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key and makes the most sense of the dream.
For a long time I thought Rosemary was someone else in my life. Recently I realised that she symbolises me. Intriguingly as I mentioned earlier the name can be broken down into two parts both of which are my initials! This little play on words and reading about dreams, helped me to see – it’s me! I am the one being rescued.
This is all well and good you may think. You’re writing about yourself and what you have experienced through a dream but what has that to do with me? Forgiveness has everything to do with all of us.
In previous posts I wrote that the dream conveyed a real strong sense of the corporate, meaning that the dream was not just about me or for me. This emotion lingered for a few days after the dream, more than normal.
Near the beginning of this post I used Psalm 133 as it was one of the first passages from the Bible that connected with the dream. The Psalm talks about harmony and unity. In marriage forgiveness is critical to harmony as one website states. This links in nicely here.
On the website the writer refers to Colossians 3.13 where it says about forgiving one another. I felt really bad what I had done towards my wife and knew that it needed to be sorted.
In hindsight it is easy to say that I needed to be loyal towards her and walk in forgiveness towards myself and not beat myself up. To remember that I have been offered forgiveness by Jesus.
In Colossians 3.13 the word forgive (charizŏmai) in Greek is a different word for forgiveness to what I was saying in a previous post in regards to aphesis. Yet its meaning also connects back to the dream.
χαρίζομαι charizŏmai, khar-id´-zom-ahee; to grant as a favour, i.e. gratuitously, in kindness, pardon or rescue:—deliver, (frankly) forgive, (freely) give, grant.
Logos 8 Bible Software
I cannot say enough how the dream cut me up deeply and was very emotive and powerful. I needed to know that I was accepted by God. One can read the words from the Bible and not be fully impacted by them. Like the words stated earlier ‘in him we have redemption the forgiveness of sins…‘ When we fully get hold of them and they are spoken into our hearts like this was, it is dramatic and life changing.
Final part coming soon.