Moving in the Spirit
/Knowing the Holy Spirit and moving with His movements continues to draw me. I love the scriptural pictures for the Spirit and His actions in our human life…wind, fire, tongues, water, dove. These images were very prominent in my liturgical church upbringing.
However, a picture that has come to help me understand His ways of leading in my life and how to move with His movements is the metaphor of the dance.
I remember my dad teaching us to dance the “fox trot.” The ballroom dances were nothing to that WWII generation of men. So as middle school girls, my sisters and I were whisked around the “ballroom” (a.k.a. our living room) with strength, yet grace and gentleness, by our dad.
Since I married someone without a natural sense of rhythm (though John is gifted in many other ways), frequent dancing hasn’t been a part of my adult life (except for short spurts of “dance parties” with baby grandsons in recent years). We did take lessons in preparation for our son’s wedding, but I ended up taking the lead more often than not. And the few times I danced at family parties with my brother Conrad (himself a strong dancer), it usually started out as a tug of war till I surrendered to his lead.
I can’t help but think of my life in the Spirit as a dance. I have the Perfect Dance Partner. He has a strong hold on me and knows the way the dance goes and He knows the steps. I often try to lead and get Him to go my way. But when I yield to Him moment by moment, day by day, we dance together as I let Him take me where He is going, whisking me along inHis way.
Oh what skill beyond my skill.
What love beyond my love.
What words beyond my words.
What fullness beyond my fullness.
Our early church Fathers of the faith understood the mystery of the Trinity, not in a static way, as we modern Christians tend to do. Rather they saw it in an active way, as a dance. And they had a beautifully descriptive term for this Divine Trinitarian Dance: Perichoresis.
If you spell out the…Greek word, peri-choresis, you can hear in English what the word conveys: “peri” (from which we get words such as “perimeter”) and “choresis” (from which we get our word “choreography”) — a dancing circle. The word describes the interrelationships of the persons of the Trinity. That in everything God the Trinity is and does, each of the persons relates to and engages with each of the other persons. Like an eternal dance, the “choreography” of the Divine Being is singular in its diversity and diverse in its unity. And for church fathers, one beautiful way of understanding our salvation is our being invited into this dance.
Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ
Many others throughout church history have echoed the theme of union and communion with God as the heart of being a Christian. Participation in the divine dance of the Trinity is God’s amazing invitation to us.
The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in the dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made…Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?... But how is he to be united to God? How is it possible for us to be taken into the three-Personal life?… Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ…The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Some questions for reflection:
· Am I being whisked along in the way of the Spirit or am I trying to take the lead?
· How can I yield to the Lord today in the circumstances that I find myself?
· Journal your thoughts and prayers.
What about you, my dear friend? Are you experiencing the life of Christ in and through you as you by His Spirit? Have you relinquished your will to His Almighty Self. Or do you continue to struggle to take the lead. There is no reason to not experience the rest, the dance, that is your birthright as a child of God.
