Good morning church family,
Feeling cagey and exposed, he looked down to see if his arms were tied to the chair. They weren’t. But still, he couldn’t lift them. He couldn’t even make a fist.
His freshly-shorn hair lay in clumps on the floor and the faint smell of shaving cream was in the air. His bald head itched and stung from the tight passes made with the straight razor. Wind from the fan mounted on the wall behind, blew over his wet head; sending a chill down his spine.
Was it a barber’s chair under him? He would have been glad for a mirror to offer a view of his surroundings, but the wall in front of him was bare. Behind him stood a man smelling of tonic. He thought he saw a white coat out of the corner of his eye.
Suddenly, the fingers and thumbs of two hands were pressing firmly all about his shaven head. The pressing was more probing than therapeutic; the work of a doctor and not a masseuse. Then a dialogue between the white-coated man and an unseen assistant began. “Some cratering indicative of neurosis,” the man said in a cold, analytical tone; his assessment finding an echo in the assistant’s scratching on a clipboard. “Strong indications of megalomania in the frontal cortex,” he continued. “No signs of psychopathy. Hmmm…that’s odd,” the man said in a whisper. The man’s hands suddenly leapt off of his head as though it had turned white hot and he heard the sounds of feet shuffling backward.
And there the dream ended. Casey Freiling woke up with a start, his pajama shirt wet with sweat; his mind alert and racing. It was the third such time he’d dreamt this exact dream in the last two weeks. Like Pharaoh in Egypt long ago or Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, he knew intuitively that the dream was not the normal nocturnal scribblings of the subconscious. No, this had to be a vision. Casey was determined to learn the interpretation.
He started with his church. Casey had been a believer for over twenty years; coming to Christ as a young man and serving his local church faithfully ever since. He never missed a Sunday, always tithed the first fruits of his paycheck, was forever working his way through a stack of recommended texts, and kept his church’s code of ethics as well as he could.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” was his pastor’s reply. “It’s probably something you ate. Many a ‘vision’ you hear about today is probably nothing more than indigestion.” The pastor was trying to be lighthearted about it but Casey wasn’t joining in the chuckling. “Either way, Casey; just keep your mind on God’s Word and trust in Him.”
Unsatisfied with this processed counsel, Casey sought out a couple other leaders in the church. They listened intently and even went so far as to cross their arms, hold their chins in hand, and furrow their brows in feigned concern. But their counsel was little different from the pastor’s. “Hard to tell, Casey,” one of them said. “Maybe it’s a riff on something you saw on TV or something.” The other picked up on something Casey had said, “You said you woke up sweating through your shirt, right? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some pretty wild fever dreams in my day.”
Casey wanted to push back by reminding them that the dream had come in triplicate, that the dream was nothing like anything he’d seen on any screen, and that he hadn’t been ill in months. But he despaired of finding wisdom in either of the men and, instead, just shook his head in time with theirs. “Alright, I guess I’ll see you next Sunday,” Casey said.
He really didn’t want to, but Casey’s next approach was to lay out a little cash and see a Christian counselor. “What do you think the dream means, Mr. Freiling?” the counselor had asked.
“I have no idea,” Casey responded, slightly agitated. “I was hoping you could help me.”
“Well, that’s what I’m aiming to do. Our dreams, you see,” the counselor sat back and brought his hands together at the fingertips, “are often us trying to talk to ourselves in notions, pictures, or ideas. I imagine you have the interpretation within your own heart and mind, Mr. Freiling. I strongly suggest you try and talk it out with me and bring it into the open.”
Casey endured the session and paid the receptionist, but left as frustrated as ever. He next scanned Amazon for titles that seemed promising. He even ordered one, but he’d hardly finished the first chapter when he knew its prospects were poor. Next, he scanned the internet for charismatic churches in the area; hoping to find one that might have someone on staff for this sort of thing. He found one about an hour away and made an appointment with someone purporting to be the church’s “Chief Armor Bearer”. But the meeting started with Casey being asked to fill out a spiritual inventory that read more like a sexual confessional. The man seemed kind and earnest enough, but the whole thing only served to further muddy the waters.
Instead of having the dream recede into the blessed nether regions of his subconscious, it only took up a more prominent position in his thinking. It was rare for Casey’s mind to dwell on anything other than the dream when it wasn’t otherwise occupied. He relived the dream often and often sought out means and methods for understanding it. He’d read as much as he could, watched videos, sought counsel, ventured out to the gnarly fringes of Christendom, and even tried something called “inductive journaling”. But nothing brought relief.
Then one day he happened to mention the dream to a coworker. It was an unguarded moment for Casey, who had worked for years to keep his work relationships as professional and impersonal as possible. But maybe it was the fact that he and Brandon were walking and not sitting and talking, that made the casual exchange possible. Whatever it was, Casey had taken the opportunity to share his dream after Brandon described a recent visit to his barber.
“Woah, Case,” Brandon said, kicking pebbles off the paved pathway as they walked, “that’s messed up man. But that doesn’t sound like a barber to me. I think that’s some phrenology stuff you got going on there.”
Casey had never heard of phrenology before. Later that night, he looked it up. He learned that there was once a branch of science that operated on the theory that a person’s character and mental faculty could be determined by examining the size and shape of his skull. While the practice of phrenology seemed perfectly laughable to Casey, it did seem eerily similar to what the man with the white coat was attempting to do in the dream.
“Should I go online and try and find a phrenologist somewhere?” Casey thought to himself. “Am I neurotic like the guy said in the dream? Am I a megalomaniac? Is there something wrong in my head? Should I ask my doctor to schedule an MRI or something? What does this dream mean?” Casey’s mind began to spin with questions and wild suppositions. But then came the moment of grace.
“Why haven’t you asked Me?” came the question from the voice he hadn’t heard since he first visited the altar two decades earlier.
“I’m sorry, I – – I suppose I didn’t know that I could.”
“When are you going to get out of that chair, Casey? For too long now, you’ve been allowing everything and everyone to make out your life’s pathways for you. It’s silly, child. No one else really knows you or the plans I have for you.” The Lord paused and Casey reveled in the wonderful communion for a moment. “It’s like what I had Solomon say, ‘in all your ways, acknowledge Me and I will make your paths straight.’”
Casey reflexively dropped to his knees and, with tears in his eyes, begged forgiveness. He was forgiven indeed and raised out of the “chair” to stand with Christ on his own two feet. But the best thing for Casey was that the prayer time never had an ending “amen”.
We’re looking forward to gathering together in the morning to seek and find, ask and receive, knock and have doors opened to us. It’s going to be a blessed time of encouragement and renewal – and I can’t wait to share in it with each of you! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!
- Pastor Tate
