Continuation of Dancing

Danielle, I love that song! Its been a while since I've heard, but I remember listening to it and always contemplating the depth of God's love for me. He truly does take our hand and lead us. It made me think of a post from this summer on my other blog, so I thought I'd share. Its excerpts from Tim Keller's A Reason For God along with another song :) We just can't stop.

By the way, I looked at the pictures, and Bethany Dillon is beautiful, the pictures were beautiful, but it still looks weird to me. She looks like his little sister, not his wife. But I'm happy for them, my opinion certainly doesn't matter, haha!

"The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different. The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us. Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this-perichoresis. Notice our word "choreography" within it. It means literally to "dance or flow around."

"God did not create us to get the cosmic, infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it. We were made to join in the dance. If we will center our lives on him, serving him not out of self-interest, but just for the sake of who he is, for the sake of his beauty and glory, we will enter the dance and share in the joy and beauty and glory, we will enter the dance and share in the joy and love he lives in. We were designed, then, not just for belief in God in some general way, nor for a vague kind of inspiration or spirituality. We were made to center our lives upon him, to make the purpose and passion of our lives knowing, serving, delighting, and resembling him. This growth in happiness will go on eternally, increasing unimaginably (1 Corinthians 2:7-10)."

"When Jesus died for you he was, as it were, inviting you into the dance. He invites you to begin centering everything in your life on him, even as he has given himself for you."

Copeland is one of my favorite bands, and from what I've heard they are all Christians. This is one of my favorite songs by them, and I've always liked to think of it as an allegory of God. They probably didn't write it with that intention, but after reading this chapter, I will definitely think of it that way.

May I Have This Dance

May I have this dance?
Saw you sitting lonely,
I hoped you would say "Yes"

May I have this dance?
Look into my eyes
as I offer you my hand, my hand

Dance forever...

Stretch out my hand
To dance with your inviting, warmth providing hand
And I'll stand out facing me, embracing me
Into my companion for a dance
Dance forever...Dance forever!

When we dance, I'll whisper nothing in your ear
Speak in words you'd never hear
This, my love, it will not stop or start
And, you know that in your heart
You know that in your heart...

You lift your hands to me!
You lift your hands to me, and hold me so close!
We will dance forever!
We will dance forever!
We will dance forever!

A side note. I went to a Sacred Harp conference today. It was incredible, such beautiful music! The story I want to share though is about an older couple. For each song a different person would get up to conduct the song. 75% of the group was elderly people. So cute and fun to watch. Anyway, this one older woman gets up to lead and a man comes with her. She's standing there, but obviously unstable. He's there prepared to grab on as soon as she needs him. And she did need him. It didn't take long for her to reach out for him, and he was completely prepared. They moved so easily together. When she wasn't able to turn to conduct a different section of the room he immediately took over. I feel like I can't describe it well enough. It wasn't like he saw her needing help and then reacted, it was like he instinctively knew and they just moved together. Another thing, she almost appeared to be blind, and had been sitting in a wheel chair before he helped her up. It was obvious that he was in much better shape than she. As they finished and went to sit down she announced that they had shared their 53rd wedding anniversary the day before. It was just beautiful! It was such an incredible picture of what marriage should be. Thinking of the other person above yourself completely, and being prepared to work together to love each other through everything and to support each other completely. I saw Christ in it. I couldn't help but see Christ's love for her through that man, through that marriage. It was such a beautiful picture of love, which comes from Christ alone.

I think I've had a distorted idea of marriage and love lately. I've desired the passion, attraction, and romance so much that I forget what marriage is for. Marriage was created to glorify God, and a marriage that isn't centered on Him will be worth nothing, will be miserable, and won't work. There's no purity or beauty in it apart from Him. It was so encouraging. I wish ya'll could have seen it! I hope I did some good describing it :)