Two Dreams of Lightning Storms

From January 7, 2024

I commented this first dream under a post from A Watchman's Journal, it's a quick summary and there was more to the dream, but the necessary elements are here.

"I had a dream this morning that I sensed a lightning storm brewing, and in the distance I saw some kids going to or from school and I needed to warn them not to go near metal objects (like fences) while the air was so electric. So I shouted a warning about the lightning storm and my voice was loudly amplified so they could hear it far away."

Some general context from my dreams is that when I speak people seldom listen to me, or even hear/notice me, my voice is usually feeble, and I can stutter or jumble my sentences, so I was really surprised by the vocal clarity in this dream.

From January 8, 2024

I had several long dreams that day, but I will share the relevant scene here.  The real world context before this dream was that I'm preparing to run a D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) game with friends, and looked up weather data from Florida and Georgia for inspiration for the setting, which includes the possibility of lightning storms and thus lightning damage, a challenge for the players to overcome.  In D&D you can roll a lot of different kinds of dice, not just the regular six-sided die in most board games.  From 4 sides to 20 sides and 2 sets of 10 sided dice to make 100.  It's a lot of polyhedral dice.

Here is the dream:

I saw myself in third person as I stood in a vague, hazy or cloudy outside setting, looking over a table covered in dice.  There were vague people to one side of me, and I was trying to talk to them, but they didn't listen, I sensed their backs were turned to me and seemed to be moving away.

The dice on the table were all a dull yellow color and semi translucent, the color represented lightning.  I had just rolled the dice to determine the amount of lightning damage this storm would produce.  It required all the dice I had to roll, seemed like 2-3 sets with possibly an extra 4 six-sided dice (4d6).  In the dream I didn't see the specific numbers, or result, but I distinctly saw a d4, the littlest die.

The dice were spread over a blank battlemap with a grid (where mini figures representing players and monsters are usually positioned), it was white, with subtle gray decoration, like vines or cloudy details, which fit the overall overcast weather and desaturated colors of the dream.

Then suddenly God the Father stood near the left end of the table (I was on the right end).  He wore an outfit with multiple layers, starting with a white-ish robe (nothing was stark white, it was always like a cloudy light-gray), with a decorative vest or tunic over it completed with a sash wrapped around His waist.  The vest or tunic had some kind of floral design to it, while the sash was a solid color, both had a similar muted red color.  It was an outfit I could easily imagine an ancient king wearing.  (There may have been a knife or blade tucked into His sash, but the dream didn't show that, I simply expect an ancient king to have one in any context).

God the Father held several papers in His hand, I think it was His left hand, so he could show an individual page with His right hand if he wanted to.  The pages all had text, but a few had illustrations as well.  It seemed like a few of them had been out of order and He was rearranging them (and in the D&D context, rearranging ideas happens all the time as players can choose to do whatever they want and go unexpected places).  I don't remember the conversation in the verbatim sense, but we were discussing how I wasn't being listened to, but He seemed to be agreeing with what I had to say, or more accurately, confirming that I was on the right track.  I had the impression that the papers represented previous dreams I had written down, and that I was to share them.  I think that was the end of the dream.

My initial interpretation was that the stack of papers is the backlog of dreams I need to share, that I've been hesitant to share because there's a mix of public and personal elements and it's quite intimidating to approach.  However, the last couple nights before this dream I've been inspired by others to share dreams, and I prayed about the matter the night before, so despite the potential challenges and odd contexts I must first explain before I can even get to the dream, here I am moving forward on it.

The fact that God rearranged the pages a bit indicates to me that I don't need to go through my dreams chronologically, but that He'll point out specific ones to share, and there is one in particular I feel led to share once I complete this one.  So that's really nice to have that specific guidance shown!

But this one took a surprising turn of serendipitous research I did not expect.

Now, the main thing here, the lightning storm, well, it was tied directly to my dream from the previous day.  In that one I was apprehensive of the storm brewing, mostly because of these broken down metal fences with jagged unfinished edges, the kind you might find on a farm, and I sensed with so much lightning ready to release I did not want to be around any conduits for electricity!  And I needed to warn others.  I've had a couple other dreams recently where electrical currents posed a danger to regular people, so its a recurring theme.  In this case, it seems to be a storm of judgment, and while thinking about this dream I speculated that maybe it's the first wave of judgment that will hit the Church, and because of the context of the lightning and my game, perhaps it will start in Florida and Georgia and spread across the country from there.

Another note, the d4 was highlighted in the dream, the littlest die.  Every resource is needed for this, nothing is too little to not be needed.  I don't think it even rolled the full amount of the die, but still it was necessary, it took every little bit.  Everyone joining together to pray for exposure or for the enemy to be defeated is necessary.

I also calculated, that if it was full 3 sets of dice with the extra 4d6, then the max amount of lightning damage would be 504, or an average of 252 which is more likely.  But, uh, in the game, that's an insane amount.  It's overkill against the enemy's schemes, that's for sure!

The grayed out, hazy atmosphere was definitely all about being a cloudy place, and the battlemap being all white with a little gray also implied a sort of ethereal, cloudy realm.

Later in the day, I was researching color names for the D&D game, but in doing so I stumbled across something relevant to further interpretation of the dream: Damask red.

There's an example near the bottom of this article, with this image:

It's a little bit lighter than the soft red in the outfit God wore, but searching Damask red online shows the possible range of this color, and the more muted ones certainly fit the style shown in the dream, the color and the subtle floral pattern.  I had thought it a little odd that God wore something subdued, though it was still elegant, but it wasn't gold or shining white.  After seeing this the reason was clear: the Damask itself, the fabric associated with Damascus.  (Oh...somehow I had entirely skipped over its "About the Word" section, until I reread it while typing this up, and missed that its based on the Damask rose, which makes it even more significant to me...)

So, yeah, once I saw the name Damask I knew immediately to look up Damascus and the Bible, and found two relevant articles.

The first one goes over biblical events, that the first mention of Damascus was with Eliezer the servant of Abraham.  Then again in King David's time and from there it continued to go to war with Israel, especially after the split.  It also notes that Damascus is watered by two rivers, so despite being in the desert it's well supplied with produce, so that seems like an extra layer to the dream that God provides in what would've been harsh circumstances.

"But what is the meaning of Damascus?" I wondered, so I check it in this second article.  And this article is neat because it explains the whole etymology and ways Damascus was written in Hebrew.  But the important part is the meaning: "The Beginning of Salvation" or "Full Turn in the Pattern of Salvation"

And then, I jumped back to first article to finish reading it and we all know the most well known event at Damascus: the Apostle Paul's conversion upon meeting Christ!  But this article goes on to say this: "After becoming a Christian, Paul began to testify of his salvation in the synagogues of Damascus."  Perfectly fitting the theme!  "The Beginning of Salvation!"  God is robed in the pattern of salvation, the beginning of salvation is here.  That's super cool.

What's also cool is right when I was putting together the pieces with Paul there was a sudden downpour outside.  It had been softly rainy off and on during the day, but now it was a roar of rain!  I wondered if there was hail so I looked outside.  No hail, only rain, though it was glorious rain and puddles rushed down the street.

So, I decided to check the weather map over my state to see if there were storm clouds above to confirm this dream and interpretation.  Would there be a thunderstorm?  At a distant glance, my state only had rain, so I looked for a close up map and...found this instead:

 

It's not a thunderstorm over my state, but uh...I guess my previous speculation on a storm starting in Florida and Georgia and spreading across the country is confirmation...Let us hope and pray that this is a sign in the natural of the spiritual shaking about to happen.