Thursday, March 25, 2010

Dancing With the Lord

In the summer of 1518 the people of Strasbourg, France, suddenly began to dance in the streets. Men, women, and probably young people and children, went into a dancing frenzy. Once they began to dance they couldn't stop and they couldn't say why they were dancing, they just danced in a fury until in the hot sun they began to fall and many died.

John Waller has written about this strange event in A Time to Dance, A Time to Die. This phenomenon has been analyzed from many angles. No one has been able to fully understand it.

I have a theory, they danced BECAUSE THEY WERE HAPPY! There are worse ways to die. David danced before the Lord (1Sam.6:14), we are to praise him with timbrel and dance (Ps.150:4), "...there is a time to mourn and there is a time to dance..." (Ecc. 3:4), when Jesus entered Jerusalem for Passover people threw palm branches on the road, cried out, "Hosanna, Hosanna!" and probably some of them broke out into a break dance, and in that marvelous, wonderful non-canonical book in the Catholic Bible ACTS OF JOHN, "Grace danceth. I would pipe, dance ye all! (vs. 95) and then, "Thus, my beloved, having danced with us the Lord went forth." (vs. 97).

On Palm Sunday I dare you: get up from your seat in church or during Passover from your synagogue, go out into the aisle and dance! Dance for joy, dance for faith, dance for the Lord who is present in our lives, dance just for the fun of it, just for the Hosanna of it. Praise him with timbrel and dance, dance, dance!

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