In touch	Check-in	Intercessions
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In touch

Up-to-the-minute jumping-off points for sermons, linking the reading to the latest news and global issues.

 

I dreamed a dream…

God has something better than our dreams… (Genesis 28:10-19)

 

Context and ideas for a sermon, talk or conversation

Another tournament, another dream dashed! (That is unless you’re Spanish or Argentinian.) For England it’s another dose of scotched hope, potential unrealised and those attempts to comfort ourselves by saying the Euros are just two years down the line! It’s been a ride, but the reality of a loss in the semis is a tough one to process. 

Having a dream is often promoted as an essential part of life. We are told to keep our dreams alive by Oscar winners or invited to pursue our dreams by motivational speakers. The players who get to lift the Jules Rimet Trophy in New York might talk about their dreams coming true; or say: If you want something badly enough you can get there; or they might tell us to never give up on our dreams. But it’s often not a simple as the inspirational reels on Instagram tell us. In actual fact, like England’s quest for the 2026 World Cup, dreams are often unrealised, sometimes they’re unrealistic and often they are unobtainable due to lots of circumstances well beyond our control. Sometimes our own actions impact our hopes and dreams – we make mistakes, take the wrong path, do silly things that put us in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At times you have to give up a dream and work out how to move on in life. You have to face the reality that you need to change the path – a difficult ask for many of us. 

Jacob’s story in Genesis feels like a very human tale of trying to achieve a dream. It also feels like a very human story of making mistakes that derail things, stumbling around circumstances beyond our control and facing the possibility of having to change paths. So, it’s interesting that at this point of chaos and uncertainty God gives him an actual dream. And it’s quite a dream. But the striking fact is that God is not asking Jacob to strive to realise his dreams, or to hold on to his hopes and work hard to meet them. God is saying that he will be with him. That God holds the plan for his life and that God will be with him to bring it to fruition. It’s God’s ‘dream’, not Jacob's.

What a relief. We are not alone in succeeding or failing or in making dreams come true or dashing them. We are in God’s hands; the future is His; He is with us whatever that looks like.

A message maybe for 11 sad footballers.

Fiona is a freelance leadership consultant and mediator.

 

 

Check-in

Connecting faith with everyday, real-life issues for young people

With the summer holidays beginning, or perhaps you are even in the midst of them already, how are you planning on staying connected with your friends? Do you have regular clubs which you can still meet up at, do you rely on your parents and carers to arrange times, or can you keep connected online and on your phone?

Our society has never been more connected, yet “there are 20.9% (or about 1 in 5) of adolescents aged 13 to 17 experience significant feelings of loneliness or isolation. Other surveys specific to the UK show that up to 58% of young people report feeling isolated from others "often" or "some of the time".

And with the recent news this week that there could be a curfew coming into play for 16- and 17-year-olds on their social media, alongside the news earlier this year of a social media ban for under 16s, how then can we stay connected? And why are there so many rules on how we should be talking with our own friends? Who can we turn to, vent to, run to when we feel worried, sad and also just really happy? Do these recent bans mean we are more isolated or not?

Our passage this week looks to Jacob. He has tricked his brother into giving him his birthright. Without going into the theology of how and why this happened, Jacob was then scared of his brother, and ran away. He isolated himself from the rest of his family. Yet, in that time of isolation without friends and family around, The Lord reached out from heaven to be with him! What?! Can you actually imagine being in your room, feeling lonely during the summer and God sends a ladder down to reach you!

This was a mad time for Jacob too, but what is even more mind blowing is now we don’t even need a ladder to reach God. We now have Jesus - God, Heaven and the Earth's go-between. He is the bridge and he is the one who keeps us connected. Even when we don’t know he is listening, he is telling God all the things which bother us. But not in an intrusive way like our phones do, listening in all of the time! But in a loving and protective, perfect way.

The truth is, when we walk with the Lord, we are never actually alone. Reaching out for help from the Lord has no age restrictions, no location bans and no curfews. This summer try staying connected to Jesus in the times when you feel alone and the good times too. And why not introduce your friends to him and encourage them to give him a follow!

Natasia Bullock is director of Christian theatre company The B Tales.

 

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