23 November 2011

For The Glory Of God

The other day I was thinking -- as I usually do -- about this whole dance thing that, by now, I'm nearly 100% certain God wants me to do.

I say nearly 100% not because I've had some kind of elaborate vision with angels and harps and clouds and a big booming voice telling me that it is my purpose to dance. I say nearly 100% because over the past month and a half I've noticed little things that, taken together, seem so far to confirm that this is God's will.

The more of those little things I see, the more I work on choreography and formations and everything. It's actually starting to snowball now. And it's delightful to watch.

However, one thing that has always been in the back of my mind ever since the birth of this idea years ago was 'how?'

How can dance -- an art form which is so open to misinterpretation -- be very obviously glorifying to God and no one else? How am I going to arrange this so it can be taken seriously? The whole concept could easily come across as dorky if not extremely professionally produced from the outset. How am I going to arrange this? How am I going to make it less of a drastic leap from the 'traditional' dance people go to see, but not so traditional that it's boring? Or, put differently, how am I going to 'sell' this concept -- both to the dancers I need to perform in it and to the audiences watching it?

But while I was thinking about all that the other day, God brought a thought to my mind.

If I have said I will dance to the glory of God, and it seems, by the grace of God, that He has called me to do it, won't He also provide the audiences He has in mind, the ones who need to see it?

In other words, why am I worrying about doing this all on my own strength? If God truly has called me, won't He make it all work out? Maybe not immediately, but He will work it according to His plan, right?

The thought stunned me.

Now that I write it in a blog post it all seems rather anticlimactic. But it was a huge realisation -- in fact, it still is. How could I have said that I had surrendered this whole dance idea to God if I was still trying so hard in my mind to 'make it work' by myself, with my own human logic?

Now I have to break the habit of trying to make all the logistics work in my mind before really committing to it. I have to make a new habit of committing to it, doing the work that I can -- the choreography, the practice, the notation -- now and leaving the rest up to God. I have to surrender the reception it'll get from my friends and family and the 'public' to Him and just create the dances. He can't bless it if I won't let Him have it.

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