Merry Christmas.

I dream a lot, both in the day and at night. And it often gives me goosebumps to find out that my nocturnal dreams often do play out in real life later on. I’ve had clear episodes of déjà vu before, simply because I’d had a previous dream about certain places I’d never visited before, and dreams which baffle me at the time- of warnings about people, months before they turned their backs on me. So I’ve learnt to take them a little seriously, taking them sometimes as warnings, learning lessons, or simply, an opportunity to understand what’s been in my mind subconsciously.

I had a dream last week, of someone being carried onto a ship. Wrapped from top to bottom in white cloth, the person’s face was unrevealed. Lots of tiny Lilliputian people were carrying the person up, onto the huge mast of the ship, and I wondered what it was they were doing. They were very fast, and the mast was shaking in the fierce wind.

I was watching, in third person as it all played out. It took a while for me to understand it all, and the moment I had an epiphany of what it paralleled to, I gasped in my dream and woke up, shocked.

It took me three days later, on the Sunday at church when we sang about taking up our crosses (that is, in some sense, learning to heed God’s call for our lives) that I realized the striking resemblance of the shape of that mast to a cross, the parallel of the whole scene to the biblical scene of crucifixion. And then tears came again because the masked white person in the dream was… not only Him, but me too.

I remembered the meaning of Christmas, of forgiveness, and asked God to show me how, and received an answer-

-For I wanted to forgive the way God forgives us, forgave and forgives me, too.

The next day, I had a dream of X, whom I had seethed against for months. I deserved an apology, I thought. Surely at least an apology. And in my dream that night, I angered and burned. I awoke, stunned because I thought I had let the whole thing go, and remembering the dream of the cross the night before, I determined to forgive.

As if in freak coincidence, X showed up the next day, after disappearing without a trace for months. I was shocked to see that familiar face, and yet unsurprised, for it was almost as if God had given me the chance to prepare my heart, change my attitude just before our meeting.

As my eyes met that familiar face, I remembered the dream, remembered the cross, the meaning of Christmas, of forgiveness- and smiled, in gratitude and compassion. In those eyes, I saw God’s eyes, and in my own hands, saw His. And while a part of me was grudgingly expecting an apology, my greater half overtook me as the white person on that large cross-like mast loomed into my mind. I smiled, reconciled it within myself, and let it go. For we are all fallen, and to stay angry, resentful, would be to dismiss God’s love and sacrifice for us, and to rank my own sin lesser than others.

We think we have rights, rights to be made up to- when the only right we really do have is to love others the way God loves us.

At that moment, a great relief swept over me. No longer disgusted, or mad, or disdainful, I went up, smiled, and realised the freedom, joy and wonder of forgiveness.

Because of You, You who were born on Christmas Day, because of how You forgave me, I can do what is impossible by my own strength.

Thank God for Christmas Day.