Quote from James and the Giant Peach - Learning to Dream Again

In James And The Giant Peach a little boy named James is orphaned and moves in with his evil aunts take care of him.  James dreams of escaping his terrible situation and traveling to New York City.  Then one magical day arrives.  James receives a magical seed that turns into a giant peach.  James and The Giant Peach is a story of suffering, triumph, and overcoming obstacles as James floats and flies across the ocean with the giant peach to New York City.

At the end of the movie, after James arrives in New York City, his aunts appear and attempt to take credit for the peach, so they can profit off of it.  James tries to get people to believe the truth when he explains the magical, wonderful, yet unbelievable story that caused the giant peach to arrive in New York City.

The aunt retorts in a slithery voice, "This is all something he dreamed up."

James finds courage and replies, "Well, maybe it started that way.  As a dream, but doesn't everything.  Those buildings.  These lights.  This whole city.  Somebody had to dream about it first.  And maybe that is what I did.  I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it."

Everything starts with a dream.

When the Holy Spirit came upon the early church, Peter quoted from the prophet Joel, “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” [Acts 2:17-18, 21 (ESV)].

These days of the Spirit are here.  Notice that with the Holy Spirit, old men will dream dreams.  We are never too old to dream.  To think of things that aren’t yet that should be.  To see God’s vision of the world that we feel in the depths of our being should be but isn’t.

Age beats us down.  And the more we age, the more we can become disillusioned that the things we do become meaningless, that the wrongs in this world cannot be fixed.  The ideals we once strove for are unreachable.  But the Holy Spirit gives the power to continue dreaming.  It gives us the power to keep going despite all obstacles.  It gives us the strength to see a world that is not yet and go after it.  No longer do we have to stop dreaming as we age.  We can dream, and we can change into that which we dream.

May we continue to dream, and may we, as followers of Jesus, dream His dreams.  May His dreams become reality because we never give up on dreaming them.  It probably won’t be a giant peach, but it will be a better world.