Whispers in the Storm: A Dream, a Warning, and the Light We Seek

Whispers in the Storm: A Dream, a Warning, and the Light We Seek

There are moments in life when the veil between the seen and unseen feels unnervingly thin—a flicker of the divine, a tremor from the beyond, leaving us to wonder: coincidence or calling? For me, that moment arrived in a dream, a few weeks before the world shattered on September 11. It began, as so many sacred mysteries do, in a sanctuary: my childhood church, weathered and familiar, where pews had held generations of prayers and the stained-glass windows had once bathed the sanctuary in the soft glow of saints.

In the dream, the air crackled. Not with the reverence of a Sunday morning, but with a primal, electric dread. The sky above the church had become a tempest of molten black and silver—the most violent storm I have ever seen. And there, suspended on the cross that had stood in the front of the chapel since my boyhood, was Jesus. But this was not the still, serene figure of my memory. His arms strained against the timbers, His face an open wound of anguish, and His voice—when it broke the air—was not one of judgment but of desperate longing. “Turn your eyes to me,” He cried. “Before the storm consumes what remains.”

Lightning raged in response, each bolt a serpentine scar across the sky. I didn’t understand physics in that dream. The lightning didn’t arc slowly toward its target; it fell, as if the heavens themselves were collapsing. Each strike obliterated the ground where it landed. Trees disintegrated. Stone crumbled to dust. And yet, Jesus remained on the cross, His plea echoing even as the world around Him—my world—unraveled.

I tried to run to Him. Of course I did. But the moment my feet left the scorched earth, a thunderous boom split the air. Lightning lashed down, not at me—for me. A wall of fury, as if the storm itself had a will, a purpose: to stop me. Every time I moved closer, the next bolt screamed down, always just short of striking my body, but close enough to leave my heart pounding in my chest. I awoke drenched in sweat, the memory of the dream’s thunder still rumbling in my bones.

I told my wife that night, with a certainty I couldn’t explain, “Something terrible is going to happen.” I had no words for the shape of my dread, only the visceral truth of it. And then, weeks later, the towers fell. The news played in disbelief. Smoke rose in the distance. And in the silence between heartbeats, I found myself returning to the dream—not as a prophet, but as a man humbled by the weight of the inexplicable.

What did it mean? I don’t pretend to know. But this I feel, deeply: in the days after the attacks, as the world mourned and rage burned hot, the image of Jesus pleading for us—for all of us—stayed with me. What if the dream was not a prediction of violence, but a plea to see past it? What if the lightning wasn’t destruction, but a warning? A call to stillness in the storm?

In the years that followed, I’ve thought often about the cross in my church. That cross, which I’d seen so many times before, yet in the dream had never looked so alive—with pain, with sorrow, with love. It’s hard not to read the tragedy of 9/11 as a mirror for the human condition: our capacity for hatred, but also for unity; for violence, but also for heroism. And perhaps, in the midst of it all, the dream was a quiet invitation to see beyond the noise—to remember that the world is not as it was meant to be, and yet, neither is it beyond repair.

There is no easy answer to the question I asked then, and still ask: Is this the storm before the end? But maybe the question misses the point. Maybe the message isn’t about the end at all, but the return. Jesus on the cross, in my dream, was not a specter of judgment, but of mercy. His tears, the lightning, the impossible storm—they were not to be feared, but to be heeded. A reminder that the world is watching. Waiting. And that we are called, always called, to the light.

So we pray. Not for the storm to pass, but to see in its fury a reflection of our need—for grace, for unity, for eyes to see and hearts to turn. Perhaps that is the true message of the dream: that the lightning and the loss are not the end of the story. That after the thunder, there is room for a quieter voice, a still small light. And that maybe, just maybe, we are meant to walk toward it. Together.