the dance

My granddaughter began dance lessons last week. She is not quite three yet and so little of the actual techniques are taught. She is learning to follow directions and move along with the music and the others. She has learned certain positions and she has shared her new knowledge willingly, demonstrating just how one becomes an elephant in dance. Grammy was impressed. I never achieved an elephant while dancing, I must say. And when music comes on and all the boys run for the rhythm instruments, my girl usually puts whatever she gets down fairly quickly in favor of spinning and moving her arms about with graceful waves. She truly is Grammy's girl. Grammy's heart still dances even when my body doesn't.

There are Hebrew words translated to say rejoice that really mean things like skip, leap, twist, dance, spin, move in a sacred procession, shake violently. Just a little more expressive than "make glad" wouldn't you say? Our lives are sacrifices of praise when we live "unto the Lord" and the movement of our bodies speak to that.

I remember standing in a Christian coffee house several years back and watching a group of kids "moshing". Watching them through squinted eyes I wondered how could this bring God glory. The funny thing is that those very definitions flew into my thoughts immediately and I remembered wondering what "shaking violently" would look like. Hmmm.

I'm not asking you to agree with me as to whether any particular form of "dance" is godly. I'm just thinking about how we use our bodies to bring glory and become living sacrifices to him. The church in general many years ago decided dance was evil or maybe they really decided it was too much trouble, this is good, but that is not. Then in the 70's & 80's a huge revival of worship dance came into the church through the charismatic movement. Some of it filtered into the 90's and even today. For the most part though, I think it has been put back on the shelf once again too much.

Whatever the church does with dance in the place of corporate worship my prayer is that my grandchildren will find those secret moments of intimate worship that exist between them and Him and in those moments find the tangible dance of the spirit that touches deep and calls to deep. For it is in those moments that I have found who I am in Him, who He is in me, and what the dance is really all about.

The Dance
The rhythm
the movement
entwining of feet
the flow of the fabric
ribbons fall in graceful billows
the point of the toe
a finger
eyes lift to Him
from the heart
not for show
in sharing
from the spirit
submission of the flesh
act of worship
living sacrifice
clc