I dream about her all last night.  And when I awake to the sound of my little boy calling for his daddy, I can still smell her dusty hair. I can still feel the tears on my cheek.

It was a lovely dream.  On where I embraced this little girl in her home.

Self-Portrait by Delsys, our Compassion Child

I’ve done a lot of writing about dreams here over the course of the last year.  Writing about callings, boundaries, hope, disappointment, and encouraging you to follow those dreams. But when I awake this morning with the feel of her face still warm on my wet cheek, I realize our Delsys has dreams too. Dreams to be a nurse.  Dreams to walk out of the slum where she lives and attend school and then come back to her slum and serve.

Dreams are not powerful on their own. Dreams are like my 30lb little boy with his hands on a 15lb dumbell straining to lift it. And all dreams need three things to come to fruition.

1. Dreams need a sovereign God who creates that dream right into the fiber of His children.  A God who looks at who he made each person and calls gently: “Love Me. Love others. And pursue this dream.  This dream is one of the ways you can glorify Me best.” And each dream will take each person on many different trails (joy, sadness, hopefulness) all to bring the living God glory and grow us to be more like Him.
2. Dreams need the shoulders of the church to help us carry their weight.  Every dreamer need encouragement and since every person was made to live a dream: all people need to be encouraged. Therefore, we should all be encouragers.  We should all seek for ways to reach out our hands and whisper: “I can help you there. And I believe in you.” It’s not secret that I think sponsoring a Compassion child is a tangible way to be a dream encourager.
3. Dreams need both hard work and the means to be accomplished. My photography dreams would never happen without a camera, folks who desired images (or who I could bless with them), and my willingness to fail and try again.  Children in poverty are often willing to put in more hard work to make a dream happen than we can imagine, but they’ll need someone to make that dream financially possible.

I’m writing again for Compassion International.  This organization has changed my dreams and allowed me to encourage a pint sized dreamer named Delsys.  I want to photograph children in poverty.  I want to kneel down and show them their image on my screen and whisper “You’re beautiful and you’re made by God for beautiful things.”  I’m not sure how or even when that dream will come true.

But I do know that in the meantime, I can ask you to partner with me in being a dream cultivator.  Please consider Sponsoring a Child, telling them that God made them with dreams, carrying the weight of the dream in encouragement, and giving a child the means (a good meal a day) to accomplish what the Lord created them for.

It’s the dawn of the third week of blog month, and Compassion is daring to dream that 3160 children will be released from poverty. My goal is smaller: I want to see 5 children sponsored this month.  We need you to step up.  Is God working in your heart?  Please don’t delay: Sponsor a Child.