Of late I have been reading through the book Campus America. An excerpt from the introduction captured my attention and poked my heart. The author, Trent Sheppard, recounts a dream that he had concerning university students, like myself:
personified as a raging mare and impassioned with the Spirit of Jesus.
I boldly confess that I see and sense this around me at the university, at the campus house of prayer, and most of all within my own self. Especially within myself. This encouraged my mind and my spirit immensely. At times frustration and anger over the mediocrity, the injustice, the slumbering of believers, & the division in Jesus' precious body often leads me to feel as though I don't trust Jesus. I wonder if other students have felt likewise. I know that frustration can turn into this [AND it has], but perhaps more often than not these are passions that rise due to the passion of Jesus. This passion can turn into a mad and heedless rage, no doubt, if not poured into prayer before the Almighty God, who is GOOD and whose mercy endures forever. Being in the presence of this awesome God is where freedom abounds and not in running to and fro throughout this world seeking justice from the hand of a man or woman. As the mare in Sheppard's account, this leaves us weary, gasping for breath, unable to stand... Jesus calls us to stand, to watch and pray, to cast cares upon Him. So that we are a free people, who run run run! with His good news and not tread through wide gravel roads with the weight of the world upon our shoulders. After all, Jesus lifted our heads and said "follow me!"... and now we walk with Him and set captives free. And so I feel that this raging mare is not without a holy purpose and neither does she lack trust in God. In fact, she is fueled by the very passions that are burning in His heart.
Here is the excerpt:
When I opened my eyes, however, I was standing in an open field
and there was an unmistakable rumbling rising from the ground. The
earth itself was trembling, as was I, because I was afraid. I was fearful
of where that pounding sound was coming from and frightfully aware
I was about to discover its planet-shaking source. Listening more
carefully, I realized the wild sound was gathering momentum and, in
fact, coming closer. The dirt beneath me began to dance with a frenzied fury.
Gazing across the open field, I was confronted by the cause of the
untamed and thunderous sound as a wild stampede of animals rushed
into my view. There were so many of them, and the mythical beasts
were of such marvelous variety, that the uncontrollable fear I had once
felt was soon replaced by sheer wonder. Like a scene from J. r. r.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or a glimpse into C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of
Narnia, the animals were supernatural in appearance: lions that talked,
horses more powerful than any I had ever seen, noble buffaloes that
roared.
I was completely captivated by what I was witnessing and so
stunned by how close the animals were that I dared not move. It was
then that one of them, a wild and courageous horse with two majestic
horns, saw me and charged. In my dream I immediately knew three
things about this raging mare: she was a university student, she was
disillusioned by religion, and she was very angry. (I cannot explain
why I knew these particular things about the horse, nor can I explain
why I also innately knew the enraged mare would understand me if I
talked with her. In the dream, I just knew.)
“Please,” I cried out, “let me explain!” While I ran for shelter, the
horse continued to charge relentlessly. I frantically tried to explain
that I too had been burned by religion and disillusioned by empty
spirituality. Nearing the tree, the mare finally seemed to understand
what I was so desperate to explain and rather than trampling me, she
knelt down on the ground beside me. By this point the horse was so
wearied with running that it was hard for her to stand. As the wild
stampede of animals continued to pound their way through the open
field, I looked into the mare’s eyes and asked her name.
I am Storm Gathering.
Opening my eyes to the light of morning, the open field and fear-
less horse were nowhere to be found. I slipped out of bed, with the
student stampede still thundering through my mind, got down on my
knees and asked God what the dream meant. It was simple. A student
movement was indeed coming to the campuses of America. And a
large part of that movement would be made up of young people who
were disillusioned by certain elements of their religious backgrounds
and desperately searching for a faith that was wildly courageous, in-
tellectually honest, socially engaged and genuinely free.
I am Storm Gathering.
This raging mare, with her two majestic horns, represented a dy-
namic and engaging faith that bridged the modern divide that so often
separates the sacred and the secular. To her, life was not about one or
the other—the physical or the spiritual—it was about both. Storm
Gathering was committed to prayer and the poor, intimacy with God
and advocacy for the outcast, freedom from her own sins and free-
dom for the world’s slaves. Her unfettered faith was attempting to
reclaim the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah, that earthy descrip-
tion of true holiness by which Jesus defined his ministry:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me
to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come. (Luke 4:18-19;
see Isaiah 61:1-2)
