come dance with Me

One thing I love about God is the way that He uses even the littlest things in life to teach me more about Himself. I love it when He reveals a new aspect of His character to me.

With that said, my brother Daniel and I have been ballroom dancing some lately. I really enjoy it a lot. Kate, a good friend of mine, also dances. She told me early on that God's taught her a lot through ballroom dancing. In a way, that prompted me to be on the watch for new insights from God.

One of the very first things I had to learn was to let Daniel lead. It was my tendency to lead, and I had to learn to follow him. Even when he messed up. I had to relax and allow him to learn to be a strong leader. That was initially a little tough for me, and so Kate and her partner, who were helping us learn, told me to close my eyes. Close my eyes!?

That meant that I couldn't see where I was going.

I couldn't direct the steps anymore.

All that I could do was hold on to Daniel and trust that he would guide me.

It's like being with God, isn't it? Sometimes I can't see where I'm going. Of course I can't order His steps. I have to surrender and let Him be in control, because the dance doesn't work otherwise.

That analogy has been helpful to me in understanding surrender. I believe that our walk with God can be like a beautiful dance. But we have to learn to trust, surrender, and obey first.

I'm not the only one who thinks of our relationship with God as a dance. Hafiz was a 14th-century Persian poet. I've been reading some of his poems lately (haha, not in Persian, they've been translated by Daniel Ladinsky) . Some of them are simply beautiful. Some of them are really wierd. Some of them are inconsistent with what I believe about God. But I read them with the mindset of gleaning, like Ruth in the Bible--I take the good and the true and I leave the rest. Just so you know, I do not recommend all of Hafiz's poetry. But I love some of it. This poem is one of my favorites:

The God Who Only Knows Four Words

Every child

Has known God--

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don'ts,

Not the God who ever does

Anything weird,

But the God who only knows four words,

And keeps repeating them, saying:

"Come dance with Me."

Come

Dance.