I awoke from an interesting dream one morning. I dreamt I was sitting in a library to write an exam for which I had not studied - a common theme of my dreams when I feel unprepared for what life involves at the time. The test had 4 small photos per row, which I was supposed to classify as showing N (nouns), V (verbs), or 2 other categories WW or EE.
I thought to myself "To finish faster, I will go through the whole page and identify the nouns first”.
There seemed to be quite a few, and I decided before long that I should check what the other categories meant first. I discovered in the chapter before the test that WW meant "things that seem to be bad at first, then turn out to be good". EE represented "things that appear good, but then turn out to be bad". I now wished I had read the examples in the chapter to understand the pictures, but it was too late - the test was now, and time was limited.
At this point there was an interruption by someone in the dream whose comment reminded me it was recently the anniversary of my mother's passing, and implied that I was too old to have a mom anymore. I disliked both the interruption and the remark, so I decided not to call him later as I had been asked to do.
Returning to the exam, 4 pictures on the bottom row were now brief video clips of rain. One showed rain dripping on romaine lettuce leaves, and another rain falling into a puddle with brown leaves off a tree. I reasoned that rain might enable romaine leaves to stay fresh, which could be good. But what did rain falling on brown leaves mean? And with rain in all 4 frames, when was it a noun vs a verb? It became quite confusing, and I started to think this test could take more time than I had! So to work faster, I decided to think of examples, and then look for pictures of them on the test.
I thought of peony plants: how ants that crawl on them may appear to be bad, yet are helpful for the flowers to open. I began to search for an image of a peony, then I awoke. Was there an interpretation to the dream?
Ecclesiastes 5:7 NIV tells us that "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless" so not every dream holds wisdom, but sometimes we do glean from them. The Bible verse I thought of was: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28 NIV)
So like a riddle, the answer to the question in the dream "Will this turn out neutral, good or bad?" may lie in the answer to this: "It depends who is asking". If it is someone who loves God then all things, no matter how they seem, will be used for our good.
