WE ARE IN GOOD COMPANY WHEN WE DO THIS

We are in good company when we dream.

God-sized dreams have the tendency to outshine us. They surpass our time and space, serving people we’ve never met and affecting people long after we’re gone. They take shape in ways that are bigger than our understanding of the initial dream, outliving us just as the dream of Moses outlived him. The dream of freedom that burned in his heart affected millions of people and foreshadowed the coming King who brought freedom to us all.

Like our hero Moses, there have been women throughout history who have chased after impossible dreams despite setbacks, struggles, and fears. Their convictions, passions, resilience, and God-given gifts led them to be extraordinary women who changed the world; and their stories inspire us to chase impossible dreams too. Consider just a few of them with me.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for white passengers on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and because of her effort—and the efforts of countless other civil rights activists—our nation experienced much-needed gains toward racial equality. Her story is known around the world because she bravely pursued a dream of freedom and equality—one that affected not only herself but also her brothers and sisters and all those marginalized on account of what they could not change. Her sacrifice, commitment, and determination during the Civil Rights Movement is just one of many stories that played a part in bringing equal rights in the United States of America.

As a child, Amy Carmichael witnessed another child begging outside a teashop in her home country of Ireland. That experience marked Amy and shaped her dream to serve the poor. She spent the better part of her life, over fifty years, in India chasing her dreams of loving little ones. She took in hundreds of unwanted children and, by the grace and providence of God, fed and raised them as her own. Even after Amy passed, her legacy and heart lived on in the hearts of those she loved.

Anne Frank dreamed of being remembered as a writer, and her words have been ready by millions. After her death in a concentration camp at the age of fifteen, thediaryshe had written as she and her family hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic was later found and published. Anne’s diary reminds us of both the Holocaust’s unspeakable inhumanity and the child who somehow managed to say, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

In her final year at Princeton, Wendy Kopp dreamed of creating a national program that would change the consciousness of a country and start an educational revolution. For her senior thesis, she developed a plan to match teachers—ones who graduated from the countries’ top universities—to disadvantaged school classrooms. Her dream became a reality. Teach For America, started by Kopp, has trained over 24,000 teachers and served three million students.

In 1940, Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, she became a political activist. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 “in an effort to empower rural women who had started reporting that their streams were drying up, their food supply was less secure, and they had to walk further than ever before for firewood.” Through the Green Belt Movement she has assisted women to plant more than twenty million trees on their farms, schools grounds, and church compounds.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an acclaimed writer and abolitionist of the 19th century. Though her publishing credits include many books, essays, and articles, she is best known for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which presented a realistic picture of slavery and the suffering of slaves. With strong Christian themes, the book clearly conveys the belief that slavery is a sin. The book sold over one million copies worldwide.

Even though Fanny Crosby was blind from birth, she composed more than 8,000 hymns. Known as the “queen of gospel song writers,” her most famous songs include Blessed Assurance, Rescue the Perishing,and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. It is said that Fanny prayed her hymns would bring people to Christ and believed her songs were divinely inspired.

Mary Slessor, a short, red-headed girl from Scotland, was inspired by a Presbyterian pastor to go to the mission field at a time when women were discouraged from such work. She ended up in a dangerous region of Calabar (modern Nigeria) and established a mission station among tribal people by traveling to them in a canoe. Her work laid the foundations for the widespread growth of Christianity in Nigeria today. With her characteristic spunk, she opposed African traditions and successfully stopped the ritualistic killing of twins in Calabar.

These bold, courageous, forceful women did not take the easy road. They counted the costs and chased their seemingly impossible God-sized dreams. They left the world better than they found it and lived lives of passion, grace, and grit. If they could chase their dreams—dreams of caring for orphans, freeing slaves, fighting for equality, creating systems to serve the disadvantaged, and writing words that matter and change hearts, then sister, so can you and me! We can paint, dance, lead, advocate, direct, teach, adopt, shepherd, sacrifice, parent, mentor, fight, serve, counsel, and do all that we dream to do. No question about it. We aren’t here to sit down, shut up, and pass time. We are here to rise, slay, and take our place as dreamers who follow the Dream Giver, who is faithful to His promise.

Excerpted from the book She Dreams: Live the Life You Were Created For, Tiffany Bluhm, Ó 2019 by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved.