Day Twenty-One: Young Adulthood

Since it is high school graduation time and so many of my young friends and siblings are seeing major changes in their lives, I thought I would post something I wrote a while ago about young adulthood and dreams.

Young adulthood is a unique phase of life, for it is the only phase of life where you define yourself as what you will do, who you will be--- not what you have done or who you are. You are what you hope you will do, who you hope you will be, what you dream you will be. It is a time when it is acceptable to have done little, yet be proud of that which you have not done. It is a time when it is ok to have only dreams, and be proud of that.

But will those dreams become reality or will they be left behind when the morning sun wakes us to the real world around? Will we see the change we plan on bringing or fad into the sunset as the world closes in on the desires of our hearts?  Will who we think we will be become who we really are? Or are we just lying to ourselves and others about our future?

Are the plans we have God’s plans and will we stick to them? Or will we walk around from God’s dreams and pursue our own? Or are our dreams our own and sticking to them is, in fact, running from God? So much of who we are, we don’t even know?  Yet we are so quick to tell everyone else about this person we have never met--- the person we hope we will be. Is it pride? Is it some psychosocial developmental phase? Is it divine vision? Could we know? Would it matter?

How do we get from these dreams to the reality behind them? A million hopes, a thousand plans, yet not a single piece of evidence that they will come into fruition. It seems so close sitting in an air conditioned car driving on a major American highway, but will it be as close driving a broken down jeep down an unpaved road in God-only-knows where? Will it look anything like we think it will? Probably not.  Thankfully not.

Our dreams are so small. They seem so huge, so unreachable, so earth- shattering to our finite understanding, but how God must laugh at our little ideas. We are children dreaming of happy meal toys with all of Toy R US at their fingertips.  What are you dreaming today, God? What are your plans?


Father, this week, let your dreams become the love that compels us. Let your plans become the blue prints of our lives wither we see them or not. Lord, let us live our lives in such a way that we don’t have to talk about what we will do, but that we will be able to speak volumes about what you have done.

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