Enjoying the Dance

I'm not usually fond of country music, but some years ago, country stations were playing a song that went something like, "Life's a dance you learn as you go..." I liked that. When I heard its carefree melody, I couldn't help thinking about how we really do learn how to live.

Then I realized that it is good an proper for a man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the days of life God has given him--for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is a gift from God. He seldom reflects on his life because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.--Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

God shows us in simple terms how to live. He puts our proper circumstances squarely before our eyes and tells us to enjoy them. He tells us not to plot and plan for a future we may never have. He cringes when we spurn His gift of days and say, "I wish" or "I want."

I keep thinking that I have to change my circumstances, to fix everything, but do I really? Has not God determined the days of my life for my benefit? I have to work, of course, but do I have to spend so much time figuring stuff out? Hasn't God done that already?

God gives some things and takes others away, but will not leave us lacking. In the end, I think that my real job is to receive smiling the circumstances that God brings not because they are all happy, but because He brought them. If I can do that, if I can find God in all my circumstances, then I will be happy because we will be together.

Life really is a dance we learn as we go and God wants to dance every dance with us, every moment of our whole lives, to every beat of our hearts, keeping the tempo of His unending song.

Regaining the Image

God made us, He says, in His own image. What does that mean, exactly? I know that, when I look in the mirror, I see an image of myself, but applying that same logic to God confuses me. I know that I don't look like God but, on some level, He tells me that I do or was meant to.

Sounds like there is some work to do. God agrees:

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and act according to His good purpose.--Philippians 2:13

Work has to happen on both sides.

God works in us, but He does not work in us to make us better people. He works to change us to be so much like Him that we will, or want, the same things that He does.

Then, we work out what He has worked in. Once we turn our eyes on God, this is our only job, and we fear and tremble at the magnanimity of it.

God works Himself into us until our wills change, letting the salvation He wrought work itself into actions. He does not stop until we see only His own face.

We become better people in the process, but not primarily in our relationships with other men, but in our relationship with Him.

Striking the Perfect Note

At a symphony, when the conductor raises his hands and the music begins, its beauty comes less from each individual instrument than from the whole of them...their magnificence is in their union. Even the meaning of the word "concert" includes an understanding of beauty arising from what happens when individual components work together.

Prayer is like this. God does not answer every prayer, only those within His will and His will, like the symphony, has one intended direction. As when violins, one by one, join with the composer's will for them to make something beautiful, so it is with prayer.

Perfect harmony is the power of both music and prayer.

We tend to measure the efficacy of our prayers by those God grants, but fulfilled prayer says much less about us than it does about Him because we tend to forget its dependence on His will.

When God grants our prayers, He is telling us that we are on the right road, that we have found at least one single point where we have properly cast our lot with Him. God gives us what we want when it is the same thing He wants.

Granted prayer testifies to the glory of one clear note of communion.

This, then, is how you ought to pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. --Matthew 6:9-10

The Glory of Dirt

Work. God gave Adam work to do in Eden and He gives it to us, too. Every day. We have jobs to do at home and outside, for our families and for others. We even have to take care of ourselves, and that is work, too.

God tells us to do work for His glory, so I try to sort through the jobs He brings for the glory they hold, but it's often hard to find. I rarely see glory in mowing the lawn or doing dishes. It's hard to see any glory in doing homework or mediating arguments or in listening to someone bemoan their own troubles for the umpteenth time. I want to see God in these, but He doesn't show up and I just end up tired with dirty hands.

And yet, these are the jobs God has brought. Am I looking at this the wrong way? Is it possible that I cannot choose what brings God glory, but that He chooses it by bringing it to me? Does God mean to teach me about what He wants by laying it at my feet and asking me to pick it up and do something with it? Does it really matter how the job looks from my point of view?

Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay Him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.--Romans 11:34-36

Come to think of it, the work Jesus did on the cross didn't look very glorious at the time, either. In the end, it is for God, not me, to choose the work that brings Him glory. And He shows it to me every day by laying it at my feet. I don't have to choose it; in fact, with my limited view, I can't. But He can, and does.

Wake Up, Sleeper!

Every night, we look forward to sinking peacefully into sleep, drifting off with relief, unafraid and grateful, expecting to wake with refreshment and renewal. Sleep is a little death, and as we wake from it, we know a daily rising, a triumphant new life.

God made us to need sleep and He did it for a reason. In making daily dying and rising a necessary part of our lives, He teaches something about Himself: for every death, large and small, a waking follows.

Unconsciously, we let go of our life every night when we close our eyes in full expectation that we will open them again. Sleep rarely brings stress or rebellion--it relieves them, but the sleeping and waking pattern God established is harder to apply to other situations in which He also tells us to let go.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.--Galatians 5:24 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.--Ephesians 2:1,6

As we die daily in sleep, so are we to die daily to sin and, eventually, die physically. He has already established the pattern: a waking follows each one, a waking with Him.

As I lay myself down every night to a relieved sleep, confident that I will wake up in the morning renewed, so must I lay down a used-up sinful life to be reborn in Christ and look forward to a final physical death from which I will finally wake up where the sun never sets.

Photo courtesy of Kristen W, Writers' Alley

How Beautiful...

Grapes on the vine crowd one another, lush and full of juice, but if they continue to hang there, serve no purpose. To make wine, they must be crushed, and the crushing is our job. It makes a mess, to be sure, but the beauty of the resulting slurry, or must, lies in its promise. From this, along with an expert winemaker's intervention, will come a beverage not only beautiful, but full of goodness.

And so the gospel. When we employ the Word of God and its power in our lives, we stir things up. Things get messier before they straighten out, both in our own lives and in those around us. But oh, what a beautiful result!

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!--Romans 10:15

Photo credit: www.weggywinery.com

Only One Job Left...

Every morning, the day spreads before us full of tasks and obligations, each of them clear and each commensurate with our station in life: go to work, feed a baby, tend an invalid, shop, wash, repair, plant. We know what we have to do. We keep a list of it.

You, God, have put us in this life's place and intend it for our good. If we accomplish the tasks you set us, we stand good and obedient before You. Like a child who makes his bed or ties his shoes, then raises his eyes to be praised, we do what you ask of us.

You want more than practical work, however. You want repentance, goodness, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, love, discipleship, fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayer. These rise before us, too--our spiritual to-do list.

The same to-do lists that frame our days, however, also separate us from you. Their objects, the people and tasks they involve, so easily block our view of You, who are their real purpose. We forget we do not live to do jobs for you, jobs you could more easily do Yourself. Instead, we live to find You.

You want us to want you and have woven tasks into our constant yearning. You are found within the tasks you give, and the tasks exist only as framework or venue. They are not You. We are not to achieve tasks. We are to achieve communion. Even if we check everything off, if we do our jobs well, both earthly and spiritual, we could still have left our most important task undone.

In the end, we have only one item on our list: to know You.

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.--Proverbs 2:1-5

I will go before you and level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I AM the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.--Isaiah 45:2-3

You give me jobs so that I can find You in the context of a life You created and embellished for one purpose. My job is not to complete all the tasks to find You; it is to know You every moment while I do them. The work itself is prayer. The work is worship. It is obedience. It is where I reach out and You meet me.