Psalm 72:20
dream a dreamy little dream
As the dream of them that awake, O Lord; so in thy city thou shalt bring their image to nothing. (Psalm 72:20 DR)
Dreams can be funny things. At the time when they occur they can seem so real and tangible, but unless they are particularly powerful, they fade almost as soon as we awake. You can try and hold on to them and remember as many details as you can, but they become like trying to hold on to smoke which escapes through your fingers and dissipates into the air, never to form again. There might be a faint image that lingers, but that is all which remains of what at the time seemed to important.
The Psalmist in his consideration of the prosperity of the wicked recognizes the truth of the situation—their prosperity is only as real as a dream. To be sure, it’s real in the sense of physically tangible, but in a deeper and more real sense it is a mirage, for it will not last. Even if they die with it still in their possession, they will still die, and then it will become another’s:
[So] they have vanished, like the dream of one awaking. It is sought then and it is not: there is nothing in the hands, nothing in the bed. A poor man he went to sleep, a rich man in sleep he became: had he not awoke, he were a rich man: he woke up, he found the care which he had lost while sleeping. And these men shall find the misery which they had prepared for themselves. When they shall have awoke from this life, that thing does pass away which was grasped as if in sleep. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 72, 19.)
Even on a natural level we can grasp this. There have been many people throughout history who have been wealthy and powerful, and with very few exceptions we remember almost none of them. They have faded into the mists of history as has nearly every other person, rich or poor, and their name has become forgotten and the wealth and power they acquired brought to nothing.
This is the image they have set up in this world, which God brings to nothing. They set themselves against God, attempting to stamp their image on this world, only to have it confounded and erased forever:
Let there shudder all our rich brethren, abounding in money, gold, silver, household, honours, let them shudder at that which but now has been said, “You shall bring to nothing their image.” Are they not worthy to suffer these things, to wit that God bring to nothing their image in His city, because also they have themselves brought to nothing the image of God in their earthly city? (ibid.)
St. Augustine’s words here thus mirror the words of our Lord, who cautioned us not to lay up treasures in this world, but rather in heaven:
Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also. (Matthew 6:19-21 DR)
The things of this world are not evil in and of themselves, but if we let them become the sole focus of our endeavors then instead of us possessing and making use of them, they begin to possess and make use of us. The illusion of control and prosperity is only as a dream, however, for nothing in this world can last, no matter how desirable it may be. Our hearts must not be set on setting up our image in the earthly city, but rather being conformed into the image of the King of the heavenly city.
As our Lord mentioned above, the use we make of things in this world and the way in which we orient our hearts towards them demonstrates where are hearts are. We can delight in the misty and fading dreams of this world which will eventually slip through our fingers, or awaken to the truth now and seek after heavenly things, wherein all the delights and temptations of this world are as a bad dream.
For this image I wanted to try and capture that sort of nebulous feeling of waking up from an intense dream where everything is kind of foggy and disoriented. So what could be more appropriate than using the plugin I Ate Mushrooms?
I set up the parameters and found something I liked and then added a bunch of multipliers and noise to the output to make it very abstract and shimmery. I then added a bunch of other effects like Chromatic Displacement and some color correction to give it that streaky feel.
Pretty simple, but I thought it turned out pretty well.
Enjoy.
As the dream of them that awake, O Lord;
so in thy city thou shalt bring their image to nothing.
(Psalm 72:20 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: