Dance Like the Stones Must

Psalm 30:11 "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness"

When the music begins, when people rise to dance and worship and sing, where would you be? Would you laugh as Michal laughed, calling foolish what is delightful to God? Or would joy pull you to dance? 

I've attended so many churches these last couple years. I've loved them all, if not only because of the people. It's not so much that I like interesting people, rather I find people interesting. But my heart yearns for something beyond that, beyond the intellect and bickering of denominations.

Is it not what we all yearn for? To be one in our fellowship? To weary ourselves with gladness? To feel exilherated long after, fully, not tickled by the Holy Spirit's presence, but immersed in love. 

When I was told that this place I visited danced, I laughed. Then I saw. "Oh." I watched the congregation rise, and I remembered Michal and I now knew why she had been cursed. It is good to worship with all our being.

If even the rocks cry out His praise, what sort of monster would remain behind laughing as everyone else danced? (Luke 19:40)

I danced and sang, compelled as David must have been.

Later that night a kind young couple invited me to their camp fire. "I'll come for ten minutes", I said. I needed to go to bed at a decent hour to leave early the next morning. 

Many strangers were dancing on a concrete slab. A joyful beat blasted from speakers. It was dark, not a star shining, but a light from those dancers pulled me forward. That same light pulsed through us all. I grabbed bystanders, "Join us!" 

"I don't know this dance."

"I don't either," I said. "Just dance with energy and it'll seem as if you do. And move your hips a lot; it'll make it seem you REALLY know what you're doing."

Laughing, we became more than individual, foolish humans. We were not "freestyling". We were worshipping, and there was choreography we stumbled along to and perfected through a harmony of liberated gladness.

And so a ten minute visit became four hours of deep communion and worship.  

Psalm 149:3-4: "Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp. For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory."

*this was a Sukkot gathering