This past summer I wrote a story for the Lincoln Journal Star about my dad’s volunteer work at Gray House, a neighborhood assistance center in a downtrodden part of Springfield, Massachusetts. He organizes the used clothing in the basement thrift store and works upstairs in the food pantry from time to time, too.
When my dad first started to volunteer for Gray House, he simply dropped off clothing donations outside the basement door. But one day, the pile of trash bags outside the basement door was so high, my dad decided to go one step further – he opened the door, and he carried the bags downstairs.
Here’s the part that didn’t make it into the Journal Star story. Here’s what my dad told me about that moment. “That was the Holy Spirit at work, right there,” he said. “The fact that I opened that basement door and brought the bags downstairs was the Holy Spirit at work.”
What happened amid the dank mustiness was that my dad saw dozens of trash bags piled high from the back of the basement to where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. Gray House had been collecting donations for months, but they didn’t have the staff to organize and display the clothes. The thrift shop was in utter disarray.
That was the week my dad started working in the basement of Gray House. He bought portable clothes racks, hangers and a shop-vac and organized the space like only a man who’d spent 37 years in the military could.
“…I will pour out my Spirit upon all people,” God says in the book of Joel. “Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.” (Joel 3:28)
Now. My dad is not going to love the fact that I am referring to him as an “old man,” yet I can’t help but marvel over that particular phrase, “your old men will dream dreams.” The fact is, when my 70-year-old dad walked down those stairs and glimpsed the mess in that basement, he saw the potential, he dreamed the dream of an efficiently organized thrift shop where men, women and children could find exactly what they needed, from winter coats to shoes to infant onesies .
As my dad stood at the foot of those basement stairs, the Holy Spirit planted a dream in him that day, and he continues to see it through, one pair of donated shoes at a time.
Can you think of a time in your life in which the Holy Spirit prompted you to dream a dream or a vision? How did you react to that prompt?
{portions of this story are excerpted from the Journal Star article}
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