Dreams Don't Expire

In the King James Bible , in the book of Proverbs , the 29th chapter , in the 18th verse , it says where there is no vision , the people perish . Throughout the Bible we see many instances where God used dreams and visions to help people stay on track or to do something spectacular and wonderful .

It was through this process that God led Abraham and Abimelech and Jacob and Joseph . God even gave a dream to Pilate's wife so that she would warn Pilate , saying hey , you don't want to mess with this guy . Jesus , god spoke through a vision to Cornelius , to Peter and to Paul . Many instances throughout the Bible God used visions and dreams .

Now there are not many of us today who will see a lot of visions in the kind of things that we've talked about here . I believe God can and does still use visions like that to guide us and to show us . There's nothing in Scripture to say that he stopped doing that .

In fact , peter in Acts 2 , verse 17 , quotes the book of Joel saying In the last days , god says I will pour out my Spirit upon all my people , and your sons and daughters will prophesy . Your young men will see visions and your and ?

While God will give us those miraculous visions and dreams , he often works in a much more subtle way as well , planting visions and dreams inside of us for our future , for things that he wants us to accomplish with our lives , the things that he wants us to do .

And the tragedy of that often is that those visions and dreams fade away , they die , and we get older and we look back and we remember what they were , but we no longer hang on to them . I would like to tell you a story this morning about a man named Giuseppe , about the dream that he had for his life and how it finally came together for him .

In July of last year , giuseppe Paterno graduated with first-class honors and a degree in philosophy from the University of Palermo in Sicily . He said it was one of the happiest days of his life . Now , that story is probably not all that unusual , except that Giuseppe Paterno he was 96 years old , making him Italy's oldest graduate ever .

He grew up in a poor family in Sicily in the years before the Depression , and as a child , he only had some really basic schooling . During the Second World War , he joined the Navy and then , afterwards , he worked on the railroad and then , shortly thereafter , got married and had two children .

But even then , there was this yearning inside of him to learn and to understand more . So , at the age of 31 , he graduated from high school , and still he wanted to go further . He said that to me , knowledge is like a suitcase that I can carry with me . It is a treasure . So in 2017 , at the age of 93 , he enrolled in the University of Palermo .

He said I understood that it was a little late to get a three-year degree , but I said to myself well , let's see if I can do it . So off he went and began to study as a student . He would complete his essays on an old manual typewriter that his mother had given him when he retired from the railways back in 1984 . He didn't use Google .

He didn't like Google . He . Instead , he went to all the printed books that he could find . He did say , though , that he was never tempted by the late-night student parties of his 20-year-old classmates .

He was in the last portion of his final year when the pandemic hit , and he did confess to a little unease in dealing with the video calls that replaced the classroom teaching . As far as the coronavirus was concerned , he said he was really not put off by the disease itself .

He said after the war and everything else he'd been through in his life , the coronavirus was not going to stop him . And when he talked about the students in his group he said it really didn't scare us all that much . Asked what he was going to do next , he said he was not about to stop .

Now that he had graduated , he said my future project is to devote myself to writing . I want to revisit all the texts I didn't have a chance to explore further . This is really what my goal is right now . Proudly holding his graduation certificate in his hand , giuseppe recalled the questions his neighbors asked him frequently .

They used to say why all this trouble at your age ? He smiled , looked at the certificate in his hand and then said they just didn't understand the significance of a dream , a dream that you've had all of your life . So much of the time , god has planted something deep within us .

When we were younger , we had a goal , we had an idea , we had something that we wanted to do and accomplish and then , somewhere along the line , we let that fade out and we let it go away . Yet God has not let go of that dream that he's planted within us .

And when God plants something within us , he gives us the ability to see it through , to make it happen , to cause it to come out of us , because it's part of why we are here to make it happen , to cause it to come out of us , because it's part of why we are here . If God has planted something within you , stir it up again .

You are never too old to learn . You're never too old to create what God is wanting you to create and become . Be blessed , my friends , and be a blessing . Have a great day . We'll talk to you again tomorrow . Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday , right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac .