Guest Post: Amelia Rhodes

For our very first guest post of October, we welcome Amelia Rhodes. Amelia is the writer of Creative Non-Fiction, a public speaker, storyteller, runner, crafty lady…and on and on. She’s also the mom that is ever present at her kids’ school, volunteering and building relationships with the kids. She’s also a huge supporter of her husband and has written about their courtship (seriously…it’s super cute. You can find it on her blog). Amelia is an incredibly dear friend to me. I’ll have to tell you how we met. Anyway, the point is, Amelia is fabulous. And busy. Very, very busy. But she’s doing it for the glory of God! 

Check out Amelia’s blog Stories For Us.

Color of Glory

We made the trek to the top of the hill because God had sent me a message, “Gather your family and friends and head to the hilltop at dusk. I will meet you there.”

My husband, children, parents, in-laws, and a smattering of friends congregated because we believed. We believed He would appear. We sprawled atop blankets on a lawn lush with nature’s dense green carpet. We lay on our backs in hushed anticipation. The sky slowly grew dark, and a sea of stars began their nocturnal passage across the sky. Conversation slowed. We admired the expanse of space with curiosity of all that lie beyond our visibility. We waited. We awaited His Glory.

Instantly, He appeared in flashes of light that filled the sky in fashion reminiscent of the famed Aurora Borealis. Colors brilliant beyond any color of the rainbow or crowned jewel filled the sky eclipsing the stars. I gasped with joy, overcome by the  resplendence of His beauty. He’d promised just a glimpse. If this were but a glance, what would the whole of His glory be? Surely it would slay me.

I managed to tear my eyes away from the bedazzling display in the sky just long enough to observe the faces around me. Tiny streams of liquid love made tracks down each of their countenances.

My heart swelled with love so much I thought it might explode with each resounding beat. The display seemed to last forever yet be too brief all at the same time. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. No one could know for sure, we were so enraptured with His glory. The mere minutes may have been hours. The hours may have been minutes. His glory superseded all constraints of time.

We lay there in silent adoration, unfitted to speak.

My eyes sprung open and gaped wildly at the white ceiling above my bed. My heart was racing, yet a strange calm enveloped me as I penetrated that land between dreams and reality and struggled to distinguish the two. I  gazed at my husband silently sleeping, unaware of the astounding journey we had just taken together. If only he could have experienced my dream. If only I could have clenched his hand and he transcended that subconscious world where I sometimes wonder if God speaks to me most freely.

With shallow breathing, I declined moving for fear of losing the awe that still ached in my bones. Had He just given me a glimpse of Himself through prismatic flashes of light in the sky of my dream?

I could not abandon the awe-inspiring attitude of worship that consumed my soul that day. It was weeks before I could describe the dream, even to my husband, as though sharing it might dim its lasting reality.

I soon caught myself daydreaming about the color of His glory. I saw it in the in the rainbow bursting through the gray winter clouds, and in a drop of water glistening on a red rose petal. I beheld it in small, chocolate brown eyes gleaming in the morning sunlight, and in the amber sunset sinking just below the corn field horizon. I spied it in the lime-green blades of grass bending in the wind of adoration. I considered it in the fiery red, yellow and orange rain of leaves floating silently to the ground. I perceived it in clouds of purple lilacs saturating the air with fresh perfume.

Had He, through my dream, attempted to unlock my eyes to the shades of His glory surrounding me each day, glory that I had passed over, driving past in a flurry of errands, raking up as a dreaded chore?

Whether He had or not, the aftereffect of the dream clings with me still.

—-

I stood in the kitchen leisurely washing dishes and cooking with my Grandma. As the movie Inception reminded us, the mysterious thing about the world of dreams is that everything appears entirely normal until you awaken. Never mind the fact that my Grandmother passed away years ago, or that she had suffered with limbs crippled by arthritis for nearly a decade prior to her passing. In dream world it was as natural as breathing to be serving with her in the kitchen. Illness had no effect. Death had no victory.

She gazed out the window where we saw workers harvesting crops in a field.  She murmured, “Now that’s never happened before…”  her voice trailed off in bewilderment. My head turned to the window, and before I could finish asking, “What’s never happened before?” I discerned what she meant. The laborers in the field stood frozen in time. With the exception of the two of us, the world was caught in movie-like still frame. I looked back at her and realized what had happened. He had come. The long awaited Messiah had returned.

My heart quickened and I immediately thought of my children. My hands dropped the soggy dish towel as I sought to find and seize my little ones. I was uncertain; were they ready? Before the towel struck the floor, my heart calmed as my spirit heard “Fear not. They are ready. Now come.”

Instantaneously, I was speeding swiftly towards the sky. For a millisecond I thought of love uncompleted and work unfinished. But immediately all thoughts of earth and its people and its work dissolved like the breaking dawn. Only one thought mattered. Only one Person.

I heard a thousand angelic voices intonating the most majestic song as they repeatedly declared His name like the building crescendo of noontime bells. A radiant light blazed above me with more intensity than the sun. I was drawn to the exquisite light with overwhelming happiness and peace. My heart sang as it soared, “Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters.”

Just before I collided with the Light, I awoke. I glanced again at my husband, the ever-steady source for reality. My hands gripped the sheets as I contemplated remaining in reality or attempting to recreate the dream world. Intuitively, I  knew that once my eyes had opened the dream-beauty had climaxed like a first kiss, a sweet intensity that can never be resuscitated. I lay there, breathless, marveling what it might be like to someday burst into the light of His presence.

Somehow, what had once been a fearful unknown was now a peaceful hope. It was as though these dreams provided a pin hole of light in the darkened veil through which I currently see God. These eyes, clouded by a human film, were given the smallest of glimpse for what could someday be.  Now our God-relationship is blurred, distorted by an inherited astigmatism. But someday the darkened veil will be shredded. That day we’ll see not miniscule glimpses, not hopes, not dreams, but clearly face to face – the full color of His glory, the utmost of His perfection, and our own delightful completion.