Doin' a happy dance!!

February 18, 2014

“One final word friends.  We ask you-urge you is more like it – that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living and spirited dance. You know the guidelines we laid out for you from the Master Jesus.  God wants you to live a pure life.”  I Thess. 4: 1-2  The Message

I grew up in the church era that dance was a bad thing.  I remember hearing someone in church say that she would rather see her daughter dead than on the dance floor.  I was horrified to hear someone say such a thing, but it does give you a peek back into my formative years.

Then the phrase “happy dance” came into vogue.  When someone was filled with joy, she, usually said something about doing a happy dance, and honestly, I have experienced that kind of joy, that sense of being so filled with joy, sitting or standing still seemed somehow wrong.  It’s kind of like singing in church.  We sing a song with the lines in it like – lifting up our hands in worship, but our hands are tight to our side, or holding on to the back of the next pew.

Not mine, though!  Years ago, I worshipped with a group of Christian writers from all over the US, and when we sang, they lifted up their hands.  I wrestled back in my pew.  My hand wanted to go up.  It wanted to testify to the joy that was mine in resting completely in my Saviour.  My hand wanted to show what I said I believed.  It was not happy hanging there along my side like some kind of sad “sack.”  So I let it go up there, in the dangerous territory of other happy hands, celebrating an amazing relationship with an amazing Saviour.

Which brings us to the happy dance!  Last week, I taught a couple of memoir classes in the public library, and I wanted to do a happy dance.  I loved it – teaching adult students who wanted to learn to write, to tell their stories and show what they had learned through their stories.  I left that room on a “high,” so to speak, filled with joy, dancing inside.  I was living out who God made me to be, a teacher, an encourager.  And the happy dance that I performed, mostly inside my head, was a pure celebratory dance, the kind that honors God, that gives Him the glory.  He made me a teacher.  He made me someone who loves to encourage other writers, and there is no reason why I should not give expression to the joy I felt, that I wanted to share with you.

 

I fear we believers may spend a lot of time, maybe too much time, thinking about what is wrong in our lives or the lives of those around us, and miss the dance party God means for us to attend, rejoicing in the opportunities there are to live out who He made us to be, and savor it.