“Thou shalt do the dance” is a line from the movie Evan Almighty. Evan is a modern-day Noah who has interactions with God. When Evan finds joy in God even as he goes through his difficult experience, he dances. When Evan is on the other side of the monumental task God called him to, God (played by Morgan Freeman) tells him, “Do the dance.” The task Evan was asked to do required him to: humble himself, be willing to sacrifice his plans, stand up to ridicule from his friends and family, and even have some folks leave him because they lost faith in him. It was quite a story of not just Evan’s transformation, but of those around him, as well. Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I don’t know that the theology in the movie is always completely sound, but I do know that it made me think about some important things which ARE Biblically/theologically sound:
God’s will won’t be thwarted. ●God pursues us. ●God doesn’t care what others think of us. ●When God calls us for a task, He wants humble acceptance, not excuses. ●God equips us for whatever He calls us to do. What I love the most is that when we submit to the Lord, and allow Him to transform us, He celebrates, and He likes it when we celebrate! And what better way to celebrate than to dance? In the movie, Evan transformed from an ordinary participant in the rat race of life to someone wading through a heck of a hard time to a dance partner of God, once he submitted and accomplished what God had called him to. I love that picture so much. The journey allowed the dance! Our hard times allow a closeness with God that leads to joy and dancing.
King David, who had many hard times, had such a relationship with the Lord that he danced and leapt “with all his might” before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:13-22). The lame man in Acts 3:8, who was healed when Peter and John touched him with the power of Jesus, walked, leapt, and praised God – he danced!
Ecclesiastes 3:8 says there is a time to weep and mourn and a time to dance. Lamentations 5:15 was written during a time when the nation of Israel had stepped away from God. It says that the joy was gone from their hearts, and their dancing was now mourning. This suggests that when we are in a right relationship with God, we are in a perpetual state of dance. When we walk away, the dancing stops. It turns to mourning.
CS Lewis said, “The most valuable things the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.”
The popular poem, “Footprints in the Sand” describes a relationship with Jesus where someone is walking beside Him, and during troublesome times, the footprints went to one set. The child of God inquires as to where Jesus went during that time. Jesus states that it was then that He carried His child. Someone wrote additional verses where the two sets of footprints become almost superimposed. This is when His child was walking so closely with Jesus that the two seemed to be one. Then just when the two sets of footprints are the closest, they suddenly become very erratic. Jesus explains those footprints: it is then that we danced.
I pray that our walk with Jesus transforms us so completely that it is difficult to tell us apart, so that we can “do the dance” in the joy of our relationship with Him.
