Dancing With Delight
The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy. He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.
Zephaniah 3:17 NASB
Ever since she was a tiny girl, our granddaughter Madison has loved to dance. She was especially enthralled by the classic ballet, “The Nutcracker.” She had been dreaming of dancing in it since she first witnessed the ballet at the age of three.
She started taking ballet classes, and a few years later, at the age of seven, her dream came true.
Her entire family – parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and even a great-grandparent – gathered for the performance and witnessed her joy. Delight was manifested in dance.
In watching her, a verse of Scripture came to mind:
“The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy. He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NASB)
Interestingly, the Hebrew word used here for “rejoice” literally means to “dance, skip, leap, and spin in joy.” So, the latter part of this verse is more accurately translated, “He will dance over you with singing.”
I love the visualization that comes to my mind when I read this. God is portrayed as a mighty warrior, singing and dancing over us with shouts of joy.
It describes how a warrior must have felt in the Old Testament after winning a hard-fought battle and realizing the victory was his. Uncontainable joy seen in unabashed celebration.
We see it today, as well. It’s not much different from a team hitting a winning field goal on the final play in the Super Bowl or striking the winning goal in the World Cup. There are tears, shouting, rejoicing, dancing, and singing.
For generations, singing and dancing have been the ultimate expressions of joy. In this case, the prophet portrays God as delighting in His sons and daughters – in you and me!
Though it might be a stretch for some of us to see God this way (to our way of thinking He’s quite stoic and even stern) perhaps we would do well to broaden our view of Him to include this idea of joy, celebration, and (yes) dance.
I don’t think we’ll lose any sense of respect for the Father in so doing. Indeed, it may well honor Him through a greater understanding of who He is and how He loves.
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