The way of the dance

Dance. I love to watch people dancing and last year before the Oscars I attended the dance lessons put on at church. Besides being fun I found that I learn a lot about how I operate - especially in regards to God.

Due to the lack of men (surprise surprise!!!) I was one of the gals who danced the men's role. It was all about leadership and guidance and I found it very easy. However then I had to swap into the women's role later on and boy oh boy was this a challenge. I couldn't seem to relax and follow guidance. I wasn't able to 'listen' to my partner's guidance in the form of gentle pressure, intuition and letting go of my preconceptions of the steps and following his. When it came to changing the pattern to avoid a hazard or go in a different direction I would stuff up time and time again. However when I relaxed let go and stopped trying I was fine and we danced gracefully.

Today I was reading about how it is possible to see following God's will as being in a dance with God. Instead of seeing God's will as a set plan or target where we aim to hit 'the' spot, or seeing His will as a vague direction with everything being premissable but not everything beneficial, viewing His will as a dance allows us to understand how to both follow Him and yet have an input in the direction of our own paths. If life is a dance with God then we enter into it with Him as our lead partner. He is in intimate relationship with us, not distant, and is leading us through a predetermined set of steps, as we go though we can chat away and He both listens and responds to our requests and comments. However when we mess up by trying to lead or mistaking His guiding He can still guide us on - possibly in another direction, but still leading us in the intended pattern. If an obstacle comes into our path He can lead us around it, or, we can do our own thing and bump into it - but He can still move us on again. We can do our own thing and yet when we come back we can still enter into the dance with Him in confidence that we have not missed our calling but rather that He will guide us into different but still good paths.

How do we know where He is guiding us? By following His prompting through our perceptions and thoughts about things we know are not just from us, by testing these promptings against scripture, by being aware of our circumstances and what people around us are saying, by making decisions and discovering if we have peace. However most of all we discover where to go by going. Its much easier for a partner to guide us in dance if we are actually moving!!!

When learning to dance you can watch everyone around you dance, you can study the theory of dance, you can even have others explain to you where to move and how and THINK you can dance. But you must actually start to try to dance before you can be sure - and even then you will probably have to be stopped and started a few times and fall over after moving in the wrong direction entirely, before you get it right. When we learn to follow His lead and relax and dream big but still attend to His directing then life becomes far less stressful and more enjoyable. I know I struggle with giving up the lead in my life but when I do the dance is a sheer delight!