divine dance
Living in the Dance
By Linda Rex
Advent—LOVE
One of the little known facts of my existence is one year I was Miss Sadie Hawkins at the yearly high school Sadie Hawkins dance. To this day I believe the only reason I received this special bouquet of roses was solely due to the efforts of my best friend to dress me in one of her mother’s traditional square dance outfits, and the blessing of having a date who was an energetic and skilled dancer.
Square dancing is both challenging and fun. One has to pay attention to the caller, follow his instructions, and do so at the same time he or she is interacting with seven other people in the square. When everyone is all in tune with the caller and one another, the group can do very intricate movements in time with the music. But all it takes is one person stopping to do a do-si-do in the middle of an allemande left, and you have bruised shins, broken toes, and lot of unhappy people.
Square dancing is a good illustration of what it’s like living in the divine dance with Abba, Jesus, and the Spirit. In Christ, God has given us a way of living and being in Jesus Christ which involves each and every person around us. As we listen to the Spirit and obey the living Word, we move together in the intricate dance of life.
It is the Spirit who interlaces us together in spiritual community. The binding together of people in spiritual community can and does happen just about anywhere, whether at the office, a family gathering, a meeting of neighbors, or a high school prom. When there is this communion of people who would not necessarily be joined together otherwise, we see the Spirit at work creating community.
The Spirit’s communion-creating work is meant to be most evident within the church community, the Body of Christ. Unfortunately, the humanity of any of us can get in the way of healthy spiritual community. So even the church, whose members are supposed to reflect the divine communion, can be filled with do-si-doers who are disrupting the allemande left of the Spirit.
Now, let me clarify something here. There is a profound difference between someone who is selfishly disrupting the dance, and someone who just hasn’t figured out the steps yet. We’re all at a place of learning when it comes to the divine dance, so we all need to accept the reality there are times when we just don’t have a clue as to what we are doing. This is when we need to be surrounded by grace.
We need to realize the living Word is willing to start the set over anytime we get too tangled up to keep going. Abba never stops singing over us, and the Spirit always is at work to bring us together and keep us in tune with God and one another. So the group we are dancing with needs to have the grace to laugh off our stumbling faulty efforts and keep going, picking up where we left off and listening to the living Word as he gives us the next direction for the dance.
Keeping in step with Abba’s music and the living Word’s direction requires an alertness, a constant paying attention to what is going on within us and around us as the Spirit moves. The grace to truly love other human beings in real relationship really does require death and resurrection—a constant dying to our own agenda and moving in full agreement and participation with God in his, in harmony with all those around us.
Participating in the divine dance is also a journey in which each of us grows more and more skilled in following the call of the Word upon our lives and keeping in time with Abba’s song. The Spirit is ever at work, and we are free to embrace and obey the Spirit in each and every moment as he moves.
We have also been, in God’s love and grace, given the freedom to squelch, reject, and disobey the Spirit and the divine Word of God to us. Why would someone want to disrupt the dance when they could have such a really good time dancing with everyone? I don’t know, but we do it, don’t we?
Our human proclivity is to jitterbug in the middle of a promenade, or to start shouting our own calls for everyone to follow. Let’s just be honest about this—joining in the dance is often something we only want to do on our own terms. This is why God calls us to repentance and faith, and this is why Abba sent his Son to join with us in our dance.
So not only does the Word speak to us the steps of the dance, he also came and danced our steps with us, in us, and for us. God was not content to just sit up on the stage and call the dance—he came down into the crowd and began dancing with us. He knows how easy it is to miss a step, or to not understand an instruction for the next movement of the dance. He’s shared this dance with us in person, from the moment of his birth on through his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. He knows how hard it can be to stay in tune with Abba and obedient to the Spirit.
In Jesus Christ we find we are all experienced and skilled dancers. He, by his Spirit, keeps us in tune with Abba, and helps us recover when we miss a step or get out of sync with those around us. Jesus gives us hope that we will never be left out of the dance, and he, by the Spirit, enables us to freely join in this dance of God’s love and life.
This time of year we are reminded of the great gift of love God gave us in sending us his Son to dwell in our humanity, in our midst—Jesus Christ who is fully man and fully God. We are reminded of how God values each and every one of us, and includes us in his divine dance. The call to us at Christmas is to come and celebrate this precious gift of love. Embrace the wonder of Abba’s perfect gift, and join with us and others in dancing with delight to Abba’s glorious song of love.
May you all have a blessed and joyful Christmas!
Thank you, Abba, for singing your song of love over us, and for welcoming us through Jesus and by your Spirit into your divine dance. Grant us the grace to again embrace the joy of life with you, and to listen and obey your living Word and ever-present Spirit. Keep us in step with the beat of your heart, and move us to live in harmony with one another moment by moment. And do give us joy in your dance, through Jesus our Lord and by your Spirit. Amen.
“You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever!” Psalm 30:11–12 NLT
When Life is Too Much
by Linda Rex
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find God brings us right back to a place we have been with him before so we can see the same thing over again in a new way. Let me explain.
Many years ago, when God was rearranging my head and heart with regards to what I believed about him, I went on a search to learn all I could about living in relationship with the Holy Spirit. You see, I had been taught most of my life to that point that the Holy Spirit was merely the power of God or what God was made out of. The Holy Spirit was an essence, a thing, but most certainly not a Person, for that would mean I would have to believe in the Trinity, which I (misinformed as I was) believed was a pagan belief.
But coming to know the Holy Spirit as the Person he/she/it really was blew my mind, and rearranged everything I knew about God and myself. And all of a sudden, I began to see I was missing one of the most important things a person could know about life and how to live it—that I am beloved, I am never alone, and God is living within me in the Person and Presence of the Holy Spirit, transforming me from the inside out. And this Person is Someone I can (and should) interact with, follow, obey and worship.
To go through life struggling, powerless over sin, self and Satan, is not the desire of our heavenly Father. This is not what he created us for. Jesus didn’t come just to leave us as orphans. No, he sent the Paraclete, the other Helper like himself, so we could and would participate in the divine relations between the Father, Son and Spirit, and come to see and believe the truth about who God is and who we are in him.
Sometimes God allows life to get difficult and complicated. Sometimes he calls us into places of ministry and renewal which are beyond our ability to handle. And our human tendency is to either throw up our hands in defeat, or just knuckle under and do the best we can in the situation. But neither of these things are what God wants us to do in these situations, because we would be missing out on God’s best.
Our solution to life’s problems, challenges and opportunities too often is a new, well laid out plan or program, which we implement to the best of our ability in the situation we are facing. Now, I am not knocking well laid out plans or effective scaffolds we can work within. What I am pointing out, though, is this human tendency to be self-reliant rather than dependent upon God. I think being faced with more than we can handle is an opportunity to humble ourselves and acknowledge the reality we need Someone beyond ourselves to save us and help us.
Relationally, it is really difficult to live in relationship with someone who speaks and acts as though we are unimportant and unnecessary to their existence. It is really hard to parent a child or care for another person who believes they can do everything on their own when they don’t have a clue as to what they are doing—it’s so painful to watch them suffer the consequences of their stubborn willfulness and independence, and to not be allowed to guide and help them. But we put God through this all the time.
Indeed, in the wisdom of God, Abba has brought me again to the place he brought me many years ago—a place he brings me to a lot. This is the place where he brings all of us over and over again—the place where we must come to see, believe and admit, we are powerless over sin, self, Satan, and all those things in life we think we are capable of controlling or feel we are responsible for. We need to see, believe, and confess the truth—we need Someone beyond ourselves to intervene, and to empower us, to heal us, and to deliver us.
And this, I believe, is what the apostle Paul was talking about when he said it is in our weakness we are strongest. It is the place of emptiness and weakness where God pours in—not so we become a stagnant pool, but so we might again pour out into others and back into God, emptying ourselves so he might fill us again. This is the perichoretic life we were created for and redeemed to participate in. This is what some call the divine dance—the life which ever existed and exists and will exist in the inner relations of Father, Son and Spirit.
To always have everything under our control, or to always feel as though we need to save the day or to chronically attempt to do so, is to live dishonestly. This is not the truth of who we are, nor what we were created for. This is living in a dream world—where we are masters of our universe and we are in control of everything which happens in it. This is just not the way things really are.
And to live in this way is to be like the person in the square dance who decides to do a do-sa-do when everyone else is doing an allamande left—it creates havoc and pain for everyone involved. It’s like we become a tepid, salty lake rather than remaining a flowing stream. Something of God’s life flowing into us and out from us becomes quenched or stifled. And those around us no longer benefit from the overflowing spring of God’s Spirit and life, for it’s as if a quenching of the Spirit occurs in our relationships with them. When we feel we must always be in control of everything which is happening or what others are doing, or always be the strong one who has it all together—this grieves the Spirit, and strains our relationships. And it’s just not living or walking in the truth.
Can you or I, or anyone else for that matter, keep ourselves safe in every situation? Do we have to make sure everything is done perfectly, so nothing bad will happen? How many things like this do we take on, thinking somehow we are capable of controlling the outcome? How often do we play God? I’m learning I do this more often than probably I would ever want to admit.
So once again, I am moved to the place where I am grateful for God’s grace, in the gift of his Son, and the gift of his Spirit. God’s mystery at work in me and in my life reminds me the best place I can possibly be is the place where I recognize my weakness, my powerlessness, and my inability to control the outcome.
It is when I acknowledge this and turn to Christ, and open myself to the Spirit’s presence and power, God goes to work and begins to do new things in me and in my life and ministry. It’s on his terms, in his timing, and in his way—it’s a walk of faith. But this is the only place I want to be, because I’m moving in step with the Father, Son, and Spirit in the midst of the divine dance, and it’s such an adventure!
Thank you, Abba, for including each of us in your divine dance, for sweeping us up into your life and love. We are utterly dependent upon you for all things, and confess our weakness and need, our inability to be what we ought to be and so to do what we ought apart from you. We pour ourselves out so you may fill us anew, Holy Spirit, and finish what you have begun in us, through Jesus and in his name. Amen.
“And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9–10
Our Life in the Trinity 