Dance Floor

For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. Col 1:19-22

What came to my mind after reading these verses were certain songs… YMCA, Macarena, Cha-Cha Slide (everybody clap your hands), Thriller. You know the ones. If you’ve been at an elementary or middle school dance, wedding, bar mitzvah, or women’s’ retreat any time recently you’ve heard these songs. And something magical (stay with me here) seems to happen when these songs come on.  People come to the middle to dance. You see friends pulling friends in, kids daring each other to move, wives dragging in husbands, all are invited in.  Some times with great enthusiasm (yours truly), with great athleticism (not yours truly), or with a rather sheepish quiet excitement they come. And they dance. And they laugh. And they smile. And they are together in the middle.  Whether or not they can dance, or they have rhythm, or they even know all the words or can do all the movements they come, because none of those things really matter because its about the music and being together again in the middle.

To me, these verses are an invitation to come back, recognition that things are different now.

You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

At some point, we are all on the outside. We try to dance alone on the outside even as the harsh unnatural rhythms of our sins, of our own nature become misstep after painful misstep. We ignore the True Song written in our hearts that was there before there was sin, before there was an outside, when we were still there in the middle of the Dance of Father Son Holy Spirit.  But we ignore the True Song thinking that we alone are the ones who make the music or that this deep rhythm of our heart, of God’s heart, could never be truly for us.

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body...he has brought you into his presence…

But now we hear this new music bringing us back to the dance floor.  We are called back through Christ and perfected in His Song. There is an open dance card and a space on the floor.

You are holy and blameless as you stand before him with out a single fault.

I am no longer alone. I am no longer on the outside. I am called back by the Spirit into the waiting arms of the Son, to dance before the Father, to dance with my sisters, to dance as One.