One of the ways of this world is to take innocence, rip it from us, and re-purpose the heart into a more palatable “product”. This was my dream.
I work (for now) at Nestle’s in Trenton, MO. We make several products, but all of them could be thought of in two different areas – meat & cheese. In all of these instances, the base ingredient – to which you now know – is re-purposed to suit the needs of the consumer. While I’m grateful for the paycheck, I hate the “industrialized food” world, but from that world, God has taught me a lot about things.
While I don’t agree fully when I see & hear Christians spout that “they had a vision” every time they encounter something odd, I take them at their world, for in the end, we are to acknowledge the Lord in all our ways (Proverbs 3:6). It is in this acknowledgement that I will share a dream that I had that doesn’t speak to future events, but speaks of how the world treats childlike innocence, and share what I’ve seen with my kiddos over the years.
The dream
I was standing on the floor of Flash-18 (where I work) and we were running a gravy product. Since this was a meat item, the process called for “meat dumpers” opening boxes of frozen meat and sending it through a grinder that would chop up the blocks of fresh & frozen meat and send it to a conveyor belt, then to an auger, then to bins, where it would be housed, then to the meat grinder. The entire process takes about 7 steps (on the Flash side) to complete. In my dream, the box dumpers were replaced by brutish men that were on top of the meat bins – the step just before the meat grinder – and there was a long line of children that were standing on a convener. As the crying & frightened kids approached the brutish men, they (the men) thrust their hands into their chest with such force that the children were taken off their feet and then, they ripped out their hearts and threw them into the meat bins where their still-beating hearts were ground up and sent to the next step. I was paralyzed and couldn’t utter a sound and could not take any action to save even one child. I turned and looked away, only to see the “re-purposed product” come out as cans that barely resembled the original “product”. It was at that moment I woke up, feeling sick to my stomach.
What it means & how I’ve seen it in real life
When we’re little, we have a helplessness & innocence that is, over time, replaced with a re-purposed product. Our hearts are put through a process of being torn from us and ground up to be later served to a world that finds the “canned” item more palatable. This is the meaning, nothing more.
I have seen this first hand with my three kids.
Although they can’t remember how they were, I’m blessed (and cursed) to have a memory of them before the world ripped their hearts out of their still young chests and ground it up through their particular meat grinders of sadness & tragedy. The “steps” that happened afterwards turned them into the young men & woman I see today.
To be sure, my kids are wonderful people and are kind, but I’ve seen them “toughen up” (re-purposed) to fit the palate of a world that found their original and main ingredient unsavory. I’ve seen them more and more, putting on a label that is attractive to the consumer, and it saddens me.
I’ve seen a lot of people do this – and it makes my heart ache.
But there is hope – hope that can be only found through Jesus Christ, and for those kids (Galatians 3:26, Matthew 19:14, Isaiah 44:3, Matthew 12:46-50, Romans 10:9), there IS a re-birth.
The hope
I’ve become more tender over the years since my salvation, and I’ve become more like a “child” because of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit who lives on the inside of me (John 14:17, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20) is making me more and more like Jesus (Romans 8:29), so long as I let Him do so. I can stop him (1 Thessalonians 5:19) at anytime, but I choose to walk with Him (Galatians 5:16-18) as much as I can, and have been truly blessed. Because of Jesus, God, through His Holy Spirit, has given me a new heart (2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26, Jeremiah 24:7) and I have been given new life because of Christ.
This is the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus Christ, and I’m grateful for it every day!
3-Minute Gospel
