As I went into my daughter’s room for one last kiss before I went to bed myself, Olaf’s tender voice greeted me from across the room. If you don’t have a young girl in your life then you may not be familiar with Olaf from the Disney movie, Frozen. Olaf is the snowman that the two main character’s, Anna and Elsa, played with as children. When Elsa’s ice powers were discovered she fled from her castle leaving it and it’s village in a perpetual winter (in the middle of summer). After her escape she flees to the north mountain where she realizes that there’s no point hiding her powers any more and that she might as well start seeing what all she can do with them instead. Among many amazing things, she creates a snowman named Olaf, this time instead of just being a snowman he comes to life!
When Anna comes to the mountain to try and convince Elsa to return home, she meets Olaf. In the scene Olaf introduces himself and sings a gloriously hilarious song about his dream to see summer. Obviously the hilarity is in the fact that he’s a snowman and he would melt if he ever saw summer. This is the song that greeted me as I entered into my Anna’s room tonight to kiss her one last time before falling asleep myself. There he was, singing on her CD player that she had set to repeat the CD while she slept. As I was walking toward her door he sang, “When life gets tough I like to hang on to my dream…”
You what’s funny is that I’ve never really noticed that line of the song before. Not really. Isn’t that what dreams are for? They’re that thing that we hang on to when life get’s tough and we’re not sure if we can keep going. There’s our dream, shining in the darkness just begging us to keep trying… just one more time. Hang in there!
The more I thought about it the more I realized just how profound this little snowman’s song really is. His dream of laying in the summer sun seemed ridiculous to those who had actually experienced summer and it’s deadly effects on ice and snow. Yet to Olaf, who had never seen summer, it sounded glorious and wonderful. And isn’t that precisely what often happens to those of us that dream? We dream about things that we haven’t experienced, usually because we want to experience them. And all too often we’re dreaming them because they’re simply out of our reach or control. And there are even times when we may come across those who have experienced them and they aren’t too encouraging to us in our dreaming.
But then I went just one step further with Olaf, while his dream was WAY beyond his own capability and seemed ludicrous to those around him. It was completely within the ability of his creator! When the movie is at it’s end and summer has returned to the village Olaf immediately begins to melt. But the moment his creator Elsa notices she immediately remedy’s the situation by creating his very own flurry. And in this moment Olaf’s dream is realized, he gets to fully experience summer!
My friends, do we not also have a creator who is able to do so much more than we could ever hope or imagine? Yes, your dream may seem ridiculously out of your reach and capability, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t ever see it realized! In Genesis there was a youth named Joseph who had a dream that his mean older brothers would bow in submission to him. At the time it seemed ridiculous to even think such a thing, and yet wouldn’t you know it, by the end of the book of Genesis not only are his brothers bowing in submission to him but so is his father and everyone else in Egypt except the Pharaoh himself! God didn’t just realize Joseph’s dream, He exceeded it abundantly above anything he could have asked or imagined! And you know what else, if God’s willing to do that for Joseph, He’s willing to do it for you too!
Tamar Knochel 