Awake, Dream and Do

UV 634-10,000 Awake, Dream and Do. Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee Isaiah 60 v 1 Like we wake up every day with the sunrise that brings the daylight back into our lives, we need to awaken to the Lord. Joy should rise in us and peace should dwell in us as we absorb the Word afresh. The Word is the lamp that will light up the paths we should take. The word “ arise” implies that we should use all that is within us for the extension of the Kingdom of God and for the glory of God as long as there is breath in our nostrils. When the sun rises, the birds sing and chirp. The birds are in fact rejoicing that the night has ended and it is day once more. They are telling each other, “ Let us fly and with every flap of our wings, let us acknowledge, thank and praise the One who made it possible to fly. There are no obstacles in the sky to stop us. We can fly unfettered and untethered.” We too need to have flights of imagination combined with knowledge and faith, where we see ourselves unfettered by the world and untethered by ties to the Earth. We should let our spirits soar high to enter the very courts of God to acknowledge, thank and praise Him. We should thank Him for ending many types of ‘nights’ in our lives. We praise Him for the dawn of hope and love in our lives. After the sun has risen and the light has come, it is our turn to shine like the sun bringing truth, hope and compassion into the lives of people around us. We now have full access to the power, grace, mercy and enablement of the Lord. We can rise to the limits of our potential with the wings of prayer and the Word. The higher and better we fly, the more the Lord is glorified. Everything we do passes through five stages of envisioning and doing: pre-cognition –the stage when we visualise, dream and set specific goals; metacognition-where we pray and ask the Lord to bless our desires, goals and plans; cognition where we think and work to achieve the goals; re-cognition where we evaluate and revise our goals in the light of experience of success or failure. The final phase is recognition or realization. The five stages are : dream and do, pray and do, think and do, revise or review and do and finally it is done. The exhortation “ arise and shine” implies that we go through each of these stages with complete and increasing faith and passion. Many people fail at one or the other stage as they do not whole-heartedly and consistently or persistently dream, pray, think, do and re-do. Often these stages of preparation run concurrently. It will lead to “ recognition” of the glory of God in us, on us and around us. Some people fail at the fifth and final stage when they attribute their success to their own efforts and do not give God the glory. Prateep V Philip