The Gift
From the journal, 7/13/2005
I'm buying clothes with Kitty. Kitty complains that a shirt I've selected is too long. I say that I don't care, "as long as I fit inside of it." The next thing I know, God calls me up to heaven where I am to receive a gift from Him.
God describes a cloth article to be made for me. It is a very special cloth and God provides intricately detailed commands for its creation. As soon as He has finished describing it, He reaches His hand into an opening onto the created universe, where the cloth appears and He takes it. Because the action of taking the cloth from this opening reminds me of taking something out of a washing machine, I make a joke and say, "Even in Heaven there is a laundry." I know this is a wild mischaracterization when I say it, but God ignores the statement and gives me the cloth to hold.
The cloth is very soft, like lamb's wool [I think it was lamb's wool] yet it is extraordinarily strong. It is woven of many fibers, each of which is a different color. The colors come together into a beautiful, complex, non-repeating abstract pattern. After I have seen it, God causes it to be wrapped around my head so that my entire face is completely covered.
God then tells me that there is a mirror on the wall in front of me and asks me to look at my reflection in it. I am worried that I cannot see anything because my eyes are covered with this sturdy cloth. I tell God, "I cannot see." Then He commands me to look at the mirror. His command dissolves my concern about being blindfolded and I look at the mirror, but without opening my eyes.
I am surprised to discover that I can not only see through the dense cloth to see my surroundings, but my reflection is not what I expected to see. Instead of seeing the cloth wrapping my face, hiding it from view, I can see both the cloth covering my face and my face as well. Also, my face is a bit different in some respects. Notably, I appear to be a bit younger and my face is literally shining through the cloth with a white light. My skin is very pale, possibly because of the strong light coming from my face.
I have the impression that God will give a cloth like this to my daughter also, but when I ask Him for it, He does not give it to me. He says, "Not right now, but in a couple of years."
Comment
A couple months after this dream, I still hadn’t stopped thinking about it. God was in it so it had to be important somehow, or so I thought, but I didn’t understand the cloth over my face. Then one night, I was at Baruch Ha’Shem, a Messianic church I attended at the time. One of the kids, Graham, ran over to me because the pastor had just told him about my dreams. He wanted me to tell him one.
“I’ll do that. How would you like a dream that is a mystery? I don’t know the meaning of it at all and can’t get it out of my mind. Maybe you’d like to take a crack at it?” I asked.
“You bet!”
I told Graham this dream. When I was done, he furrowed his brow and said, “There’s something familiar about this.” Then his face brightened and he ran into the other room. “I know what it is! I just need a Bible!”
Seconds later, he came back with a Bible and shared the following passage with me. Please note that at the time I had only just started going to church, had read very little of the Bible, and was unfamiliar with the book of Exodus.
Exodus 34:29-35
"It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai [with the 10 commandments] that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him.
So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.
Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them.
Afterward all the sons of Israel came near, and he commanded them to do everything the L-rd had spoken to him on Mount Sinai.
When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.
But whenever Moses went in before the L-rd to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded,
The sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went to speak with Him.
Back to the dream
After Graham showed me the Exodus passage, it occurred to me that this dream was a way for God to show me that it was indeed Him in my dream. My face shone because I was in His presence. The cloth covered my face, like the veil that covered Moses’ face, to emphasize how bright the reflected light was.