Put on Your Dancing Shoes!
Key Verse to Read and Treasure
And a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4, ESV)
For Insight
I love Country Line Dancing. It’s on my list of things I want to learn. I can remember how my mother taught us how to jitterbug when we were growing up. Many evenings my she would dance with me and my sisters, twirling us around the living room while music played in the background, and we would laugh and dance until we were exhausted. Those are great memories. Not one of us had a hard time falling asleep on the evenings we danced after dinner.
Even when we are old and gray it’s never too late to learn to dance, add dancing into our life or learn some new dance moves. I often think that Jesus must have danced when he attended the wedding at Cana. Certainly he was not sitting in the corner reciting Scripture verses or ridiculing the festivities while everyone around him danced and celebrated the newlyweds. Weddings were a festive time for people to enjoy and experience happiness.
When’s the last time you danced? In this life, that’s filled with so much grief, trials, disappointments, challenges, sorrow and tragedy, we could use a lot more laughter, happiness, and dancing.
When King David was a young king he as able to return the Ark of the LORD back to the City of David and he was so overjoyed he danced before God vigorously. Dancing out of his linen ephod, exposing his under garments and skin. His wife, Michal—who was the daughter of king, Saul, was looking out of a window and saw David leaping and dancing in the LORD’s presence. She thought David’s display was vulgar, lewd, and undignified so she despised him. Afterward, she chastised him for dancing in this manner but David defended himself by saying it was not for people he danced, but for the Lord God.
Michal might have disdained David’s for his holy dance before God, but God didn’t. God doesn’t despise or disapprove of our dancing either. Of course he doesn’t approve of or want us to degrade ourselves or dishonor him with suggestive, or vulgar dancing as pagans used to do, but he gave us bodies to move and to use to his glory.
Dancing can be holy, or simply done to bring a little levity into our life, help us relax, promote good heart health, and change our mood for the better. One thing for sure we should never get too old to do, even if it’s from a wheelchair—is to dance!
Check Yourself
Have you forgotten how to dance?
Praying Ecclesiastes 3:4
Thank You, God for bodies that can be used to dance joyously before you. May we never be too stiff or stuffy to dance. Amen
Digging Deeper
Devotionally Yours 