Dancing with God

Background Passages: John 10:10; Psalm 116:13-14, Deuteronomy 30:19-20; Psalm 30:11

Have you ever noticed how you can find connections in random things? I read four seemingly unrelated things this week and found a connection I’d like to share. I hope it make sense when I put it on paper. Let’s play connect the dots

Dot One

As a part of my devotional studies this week I read a passage out of John. It is a lengthy story that is a part of the “I am…” statements of Jesus.

The man, blind since birth, dipped his hands into the Pool of Siloam as he was instructed, carefully washing the mud ball from his eyes. After he had done so, “the man went home seeing.” His rejoicing captured the attention of friends, neighbors and Pharisees. Because it was the Sabbath, a quick investigation ensued, leading the religious elite to Jesus. After a bit of verbal wrangling, Jesus explained to them…

“I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10 is one of my favorite verses, hinting at a life Jesus promises all who put their faith and trust in him. It’s hard to explain that concept to one who doesn’t believe in Christ. When we try to live life on our own it is easy to get disillusioned and disoriented. The chaos that confronts us at every turn saps the life right out of us.

Life with Christ, on the other hand, becomes worth the pain of living. Our relationship to Christ brings with it the possibility of a new joy, a new vitality, in the face of life’s troubles…if we embrace it.

Hang on to that thought.

Dot Two

My uncle, the Rev. Leslie Lewis, is the pastor of a Lutheran church in a farming community near Lubbock. One of his published devotional thoughts this week talked about taking up the cup of salvation as described by the songwriter in Psalm 116.

Leslie wrote about taking up the cup. “That’s the nature of relationship. All we can do is take the cup. The cup being life, with all its circumstances as it comes to us. For God comes to us as our life.”

Think about that for a second. “God comes to us as our life.” Life is messy, isn’t it? Disordered? Chaotic? God with us amid the chaos.

We find ourselves in a global pandemic, restricted in what we can do and where we can go. Unable to reach out and touch those we love. Even in the middle of something as broad as this, the other burdens of living don’t go away. Fractured relationships. Missing paychecks. Poor decisions. Sickness. Misunderstandings. Life easily becomes unbearable and disorienting if we let it. It is relentless in its attack. Each day brings new burdens to face. Doesn’t sound all that abundant, does it?

Leslie continued, “Sometimes we see life coming at us and are tempted to pray as our lord did, ‘If it be possible let this cup pass from me.’ But the relationship with life demands we take the cup…take responsibility for what is coming to/at us. A loving relationship with God is no more than willingly accepting the cup; the person, the circumstance of life as an invitation to dance with God.”

I love that! “An invitation to dance with God.” Abundant living is not the absence of all the issues that life throws at us for this life we’ve been given to live is both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Nor is it hiding ourselves behind a veil of religiosity.

Leslie shared that we Christians tend to hide behind pious platitudes, made empty because we don’t live the truth buried deeply inside them. “God is in control.” “God will never give us more than we can handle.” When life has us in its talons, our heart is not in them. We live on the surface of our faith, not in its depths. Hide behind the curtain of pious living.

Jesus later said as much to the Pharisees.

“You hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. First, clean the inside…” (Matthew 23:25-26)

Taking up the cup means embracing all that life holds and finding a way to dance our way through it with the Father. Leslie added, “Life is not for sissies. Those who only want to play it safe will never know the riches of his love.” Never know what it means to live the abundant life.

Hold on to this dot and let me take you to another.

Dot Three

I picked up a book this week from my personal library which I have not read in more than 45 years. Dancing at My Funeral, written by Maxine Dunnam in 1973, is about the joy that comes in the present from living an authentic, Christ-filled life.

In her book, Dunnam argues that the thirst for real life is as old as creation itself. That God built within us the desire to experience life at its fullest…in abundance. In Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, tells the Hebrew people…

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now, choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Dunnam writes, “Here ‘life’ and ‘death’ don’t signify ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence.’ Rather, they hold a promise that existence can be enriched and thereby become real life.” Authentic life. Abundant life. “You can have a dead life or a real life—one that is lived in confidence, hope and gratitude.” And, if we’re truthful, we’ve all known Christians who were the “walking dead,” those who allowed life to suck the joy out of their relationship to God. That’s not what God intended.

Like my uncle, Dunnam argues that Christians tend to cloister behind the walls of the church or wrap ourselves in the cloak of spirituality to avoid the hazards of the world. Dunnam says real life is not in the avoidance of problems, but in our dynamic relationship to God. Staying connected to him while facing the world as it comes and ministering through the problems and the pitfalls. Abundant life is God’s gift in the middle of the messiness of life.

God offers us the same as he offered the Hebrew children. Choose life! Choose abundance!

Dot Four

Real and abundant life is an experience. The work of God is making us real. In the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams, the worried rabbit is told by the wise old Skin Horse that it takes a long time to become real.

“It doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully made. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

God’s call to abundant living is a call to love and serve others. Those acts of service will often leave us with hair loved off, eyes dropped out and a little loose in the joints. You may look ugly in the sight of the world, but they don’t understand. God loves our mangy, bug-eyed shabbiness that comes from an abundant life of sacrifice.

Connect the dots

What does abundant life mean to me? It means desiring the fullness of life that only a relationship with God can provide. Willingly serving and loving others. It means embracing our cup…this life…as it comes with all its joy and despair…all its turmoil and tests…all its passion and grace. It means to choose this life…to love God, to listen to his words and hold tightly to him at all times. It means living a real, authentic faith evidenced by a cup as clean on the inside as it is on the outside. It means full joy and contentment in a relationship with a loving Father.

It means dancing with God.

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosened my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.: (Psalm 30:11)