...and we knew God had stayed.

A version of this reflection was first spoken aloud as a sermon on October 26, 2025, at East End United Regional Ministry. A reflection on Joel 2:23–32

I dreamed of rain.
Thick, heavy rain that made the gutters weep.
Rain that smelled of iron and forgiveness.
Rain that didn’t ask who was worthy.

It fell through holes in the ceiling of shelters,
slid down the faces of people waiting in line for soup,
washed the dust from a sleeping bag in the alley.
A woman caught it in her mouth like communion.
A man lifted his palms to the sky and sobbed,
simply from being touched.

Hope was in the wind,
messing up our hair without apologizing.

I dreamed of God standing in the rain too,
barefoot, soaked,
sighing into the mouths of the thirsty.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of the years eaten alive by grief.
Years that didn’t produce anything;
not love, not courage, not even sleep.
Just numbness,
and the throb of surviving.

In the dream,
God gathered those years like dead birds from the roadside,
laid them gently on the altar,
brushed dirt from their wings,
and blew into them.

The wings twitched.
The eyes opened.
Nothing is wasted, God said.
Not even the days you couldn’t get out of bed.

Every broken thing will be compost.
Even the years you buried yourself.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of soup pots.
Big metal ones,
dented by the saints.
Hands stirring, stirring, stirring …
spoons scraping grief off the bottom.
The smell of garlic and longing.

A man with missing teeth said,
Next week, I’ll help bake.
A woman shared that her dreams of forgiveness came true.
Laughter shook the room like thunder.
No one left hungry.
Just a sing-song of I’ll see you next week
You bet. You bet.

And God sat in the back,
feet up,
eating pickles and Timbits,
strumming on an old guitar
and nodding:

Yes. This is what I meant.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed the food bank closed its doors

Not because we ran out of food,
but because we ran out of hunger.
Because no one had to choose between rent and dinner anymore.
Because justice finally kept the promise
that charity was never meant to carry alone.

Because the question was no longer, How will I eat?
but, Whom shall I invite to dinner?

I dreamed the line didn’t disappear,
it just became a circle.
People stayed.
But they came to create.
To dance.
To check on each other.
To sit shoulder to shoulder
and feel what it is to belong.

I dreamed of a child bringing tomatoes from their garden
and being praised like they’d mined gold.
Of an elder writing names in icing on cakes
and whispering, This one is for you.

Love was the meal.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of a government that stopped pretending not to see.
One that didn’t call poverty a moral failure.
One that didn’t shrug while people
froze on park benches beside luxury condos,
whose board is suing the sanctuary next door.

I dreamed of officials in suits who wept
while signing a housing bill.

I dreamed of wealth redistributed like sacramental wafers,
Enough for everyone, even the last in line.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of the tired ones.
The ones who said,
I can’t pray anymore. It hurts too much.
The ones who left church
because church left them.

In the dream, God prayed for them instead.
Angels borrowed their voices
and wept them into psalms.

The rest of us took turns holding the hope they’d misplaced,
Watching over a light
that kept flickering
but never went out.

We passed the torch back and forth
until every hand was warm with it.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of ICE agents forgetting their orders.
Of detention centres melting into rivers.
Of guards setting down their weapons,
shaking out their fists like a flock just released.

In the dream, mothers carried their children home
across oceans of forgiveness.
No one was illegal.
Or missing.
Or afraid of a knock.

God stood at the border
with a clipboard that said only:
Beloved.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of the Spirit moving like floodwater.
Breaking every dam,
ignoring every sign that said
Keep Out.

Spirit crawling into cracks and crawlspaces,
kissing the bruised foreheads of the unclaimed.

The holy poured itself
into addicts’ veins,
into the hearts of the exhausted,
into the lungs of the dying.

Old women dreamed again.
Children spoke languages of love
no one had yet taught them.
The sky split open like a woman in labour
and mercy spilled out screaming.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of shame
walking itself to the river
and drowning.

Of ladies laughing too loud
and men finally crying in public.

Of everybody and every body dancing under stained glass light,
no apologies or sermons about “welcome,”
just home.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of prophets rising
from park benches and encampments.
Of their cardboard signs
turning into scripture.

Of filthy holy beings blessing the bread
at the edge of the city,
fracturing it with their own bruised hands.

God whispered to each of them:
Even you. Especially you.
Here.
Now.

And the city quaked
under the weight
of that goodness and mercy
chasing all of us down.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of the years when we were afraid
we might not make it.
Afraid that hope was a thing we could no longer afford.

I dreamed of those fears
crumbling like stale crackers,
and a hundred small acts of kindness rising in their place.

A woman planting basil in the church garden.
A child offering their snack.
A congregation that kept dreaming
long after it was trendy to do so.

And we knew God had stayed.

I dreamed of rain again.
This time, it didn’t stop.

It poured through Parliament and prisons,
into courtrooms and safe consumption sites,
over the graves of the forgotten.

The rain made everything holy again.
It erased the lines between sacred and ordinary.
It touched the places we forgot were still alive.
It softened what had been hard too long.
It ran through the cracks in our doubt,
gathered in the bowls of our hands,
and we drank like people who had been waiting forever.

We gulped,
and in the years the locusts ate
we might have been embarrassed,
but it was just the sound of dry things saying yes.

And we knew God had stayed. 🦢