Scripture
Zephaniah 3: 17 - 18
The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty saviour, Who will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, Who will sing joyfully because of you, as on festival days.
Reflection
I have sometimes wondered when is enough, enough. There are days when it seems like I have to ask myself, ‘what else can go wrong,’ or ‘now what is going to happen.’ It can be overwhelming sometimes just to deal with what life throws at us. Dr. Barbara Holmes, president emerita of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, as well as former professor of ethics and African American religious studies and vice president of academic affairs at Memphis Theological Seminary, speaks to this challenge and then to what she understood to be God’s response. In recent years she had been struggling with a number of health issues that came up rather suddenly. These challenges forced a long awaited hip operation to be postponed, until they could get the other health concerns under control, or dealt with. She lamented the fact that without that hip operation she might have faced living in a wheelchair. It was at this low time her life that she says she had an encounter with the divine. She says, “It was at that moment that God asked, “May I have this dance?”
“Dance?” I was outraged. “What do you mean dance? I can’t even walk.”
And the answer came back, “Your spirit knows the steps. Breathe, relax, breathe.”
It was this moment that she was able to let go of all of her fears, all of the ‘what ifs’ that had been swirling around in her mind and to just be in presence of God dancing to music that she, nor God, could hear, but she already knew the steps.
The reading from Zephaniah speaks to this divine dance. Zephaniah is a very short, only 3 chapters long, book in Hebrew scriptures. In the first two chapters of this book, God is complaining against the people because of their worship of idols, deification of sun, moon, and stars, and self-sufficiency so complete that there’s no need to depend on God. This was a very desolate time for the people of God, who seemed to have lost their way. It is at this point, this point of destruction that God comes as that mighty saviour. In this little book God goes from lamenting the destruction of the people to dancing and singing. How can we know that God dances? In Hebrew, the word for joy literally means to become so excited to be dancing like a whirlwind, or dancing with such abandon that the only way to describe it would be as a whirlwind. We don’t usually translate that Hebrew word in that way, it is usually translated as joy. The reality is that it is much more, it is a dance of pure abandon and the scripture from Zephaniah assures us that God is singing and dancing, twirling, excitedly, with pure abandon. I sometimes wonder if it is us who forget to dance?
In midst of all of the trials, stresses, and challenges of life, maybe it is us who forget to dance. Sometimes it I wonder if we get so bogged down with all of the challenges of life, we allow them to overshadow everything in our lives, that we don’t even recognize that God is calling us back to that divine dance of love. Maybe it is because there are times in our lives when we don’t feel worthy of being a part of that dance. Maybe it is because we become so focused on the negative in our lives that to even think of being a part of God’s dance of love is unimaginable at that moment. Maybe we are just so tires of things always going wrong that we don’t realize that in God’s dance we might just be strengthened and renewed in God’s love. There may be so many reasons why we don’t hear God’s call to us to ‘come and dance with me.’ Yet, even when we can’t hear that call, it is there. I remember reading an anonymous quote that was written on a wall in an interment camp; “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. I believe in God even when he is silent.” I wonder if maybe it is us who cannot hear God in the midst of all of the struggles of life. Yet, we are still called to join in God’s dance, the dance that as Dr. Holmes says is as simple as ‘breathe, relax, breathe.” So let us join in God’s dance for God is calling each of us, in the midst of the pain, sorrow, loss, and struggles of live, God is calling us to come and be in the presence of my love, join my dance and I will be with you always. To join the divine dance of God’s love, even in the midst of the challenges can be difficult but to breathe, relax and breathe again, to be a part of the dance, might just give us the courage, the strength, to continue on and face life again. Let us all join the dance and God’s exuberant love will carry us forward.
Prayer
God of the dance, we ask for the courage to join you in the divine dance, even when we are feeling overwhelmed by life. Open our ears that we might hear your call. Open our hearts that we might remember the steps, breathe, relax, breathe. Open us to your presence now and always. We ask this in the name of the one who came to dance with us, your son, Jesus. Amen.
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