Jan and I take a daily walk together. Normally, we walk at mid-morning after our writing schedule is finished, but on this particular morning, we had to be on the road early so we walked just after sunrise. I’ve walked past the home in the photo hundreds of time but because our walks are normally during daylight hours, I never saw the light inside the cupola depicted in the photo. We live in an older neighborhood with few streetlights so that little light must be visible for a great distance during the night hours.

For a few days, I wondered why I felt drawn to take the photo. This morning, the Lord said, “Prodigal dreams are returning home.” When I think of the word “prodigal” I typically think of returning children or loved ones, never a dream. The longer I thought about the Lord’s words the more they began to make sense.

Some of you have dreams you abandoned because you did not understand the timing or content of the dream or something took place in your personal life that stalled and distanced the fulfillment of the dream. When those things were taking place you had a dream, but not the heart of the Father. A work more important than the dream itself had not yet taken place in your heart. As a result, the dream wandered away and you moved on with life thinking the dream was lost forever. 

In the intervening years, as the dream wandered, your heart has changed. A healing and maturing have taken place. You now have the heart of the Father. That heart is the light that now sits atop your life – a cupola of hope welcoming the dream back home. When you see the dream at a distance coming home run to embrace its return with joy. Prepare the equivalent of the fatted calf. It is time to celebrate. You now have the heart to carry the dream through all its future stages of development and bring it to the fulfillment of its original intent.  With God and with hope, nothing is impossible, even the return of a prodigal dream.