“…Your old men shall dream dreams…” – Joel 2:28

I saw a tweet the other day in which a young girl, age 10 or so, asked her aunt, “Were you really born in the nineteen hundreds?”  When her aunt nodded, “Yes,” the girl exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!”

I imagine to her, being born in the prior century implies ancientness.  The fact that I was born smack dab in the middle of the last century has to make me seem old in the eyes of some probably in ways similar to how I viewed my grandparents who were born in the 1890s.  I’m good with it.  Actually, I’m pretty content aside from the few aches that come with aging.

A couple of nights ago I had a dream.  I dream pretty frequently like most people and like most people, most of the time I can’t remember what I dreamed other than bits and pieces that don’t make a coherent whole.  This time was only a little different.  I don’t remember what came before and what came after, but here is what I do remember.  I was in a room facing a wall and there was a poster on the wall with these words: “The Furious Love of God.”

When I woke, those words were etched in my mind and I’ve been thinking about them ever since.  At first glance “Furious” is a curious and even oxymoronic way to describe the love of God, and I’ve seen and heard it described in a lot of ways over the years.  To begin with, most definitions of “furious” involve descriptors like angry, full of rage, turbulent, ferocious, and violently passionate.  Secondary definitions use terms like “intense” which seems to make sense.  God does love us intensely.

The more I thought about it, “intense,” although accurate, didn’t seem to capture the strong emotion that I felt while in the dream when I read those words on the wall.  It felt more like this love was powered by an unrestrained energy that was overpowering.  

When we think about it, God did allow violence to be done to Himself because of His love for us.  There was certainly fury behind that act, the likes of which the world had never seen before nor has it seen since.  While it can be conveniently blamed on evil men, the fact remains that what happened that day on Calvary (“place of the skull”) was prophesied long before those men were born.  The redemption purchased that day was because of “The Furious Love of God” which He has for all of humanity.

I’m not sure why I had that particular dream.  Maybe it was just a reflection of my psychological state or maybe something was being shared with me, a confirmation perhaps, in a way fitting for an old man.    

Oh how He loves you and me.

Oh how He loves you and me.

He gave His life; 

What more could He give?

Oh how He loves you;

Oh how He loves me;

Oh how He loves you and me.¹

1. “O How He Loves You and Me,” © Word Music, LLC, 1975.

© Byron L. Hannon, 2021.  All rights reserved to text content unless otherwise noted.