Lenten Devotional (11): Learning How to Dance
Lent is a great training camp. It is a season for dance practice leading to the dancing concerto of Easter morn.
My children love to dance. It happens in our house and the house of friends. Where two or three are gathered, there is a dance. The Brazilian poet and writer Paulo Coelho notes that “When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.” Dancing becomes an extension of who you are, but you can only discover who you are the more you dance. Dancing becomes a luxury of self-learning. The opposite is also true. Without investment on the dance floor, you cannot expect to learn who you are. The analogy of the dance is a short way of speaking of the continuation of movements—the poetry of the bones—as a pre-requisite to knowing thyself.
Parents know this intimately. Training our children is always a challenge. We may succeed here or there, but consistency is a constant struggle. Sometimes, the dances are left incomplete at the end of the day. But the key is the continuation of rehearsal and communal gatherings. Even when the dances don’t happen formally, they can occur in the casualness of the front yard or a living room.
Proverbs lays out the principle of long-term faithfulness:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Lent is a great training camp. It is a season for dance practice leading to the dancing concerto of Easter morn. In this Lenten-tide, we learn that we need to be trained by our Father in heaven even as we train our children in truth. What parents wish to learn and pass on are patterns that children will carry throughout life. You become what you practice.
Much like worship, parenting is the art of instilling life-long rituals. The same is applied to mentors and teachers. Training is more than memorizing or learning new things; training is catechizing our children in the way of truth. It is formational from beginning to end. It is teaching the dance even when the bones hurt.
Lent gives us the perfect training theme: the cross of Jesus. The cross instructs those under our care that there is no glory before the crown; no victory before the war and no feast before the fast. The cross teaches that in serving one another, we are truly free.
Our children need habits more than facts. They need to see the cross of Jesus as the center of their formation. They need the crucified Lord as their Savior. Once the cross becomes the great marker in their journey, they will not depart from it. They will live their lives feasting in the empty tomb. Lent is ultimately a season where our Father in Heaven trains us in the way we should go. We commune with the Triune God because he leads our steps, moves, and lives to the green pastures where there is dancing forevermore.
Prayer: O great Father, who carried us in the wilderness, do not cease to train us to serve you, to form us to love you and to prepare us to endure this journey well. We long to learn from your ways and we ask that you would give us hearts of wisdom that we might not depart from your ways through Christ our Lord, amen.
Hymn of the Day: What Wondrous Love Is This
Notations
This was the second discussion I had with Dr. Samuel Frost on full preterism. I am now making it available for free. We delve into the Gary Demar controversy and offer our continued concerns with his trajectory, especially his affiliation with notable Hyper-Preterist thinkers. Gary's language today reflects much of the language used by full-preterists at the height of their movement, which is even more troubling.
Sam and I also discuss the universalist and syncretistic appeal of hyper-preterism and offer examples of how full-preterism has ended in cultish places. Once you re-consider classic Christian categories, you begin to re-consider everything else.
Nuntium
It was really great to meet Mr. James Goode in Moscow, ID. James is a teacher at Logos Online. He is a favorite among students and moving into assistant work at New Saint Andrew College:
I am traveling to Lancaster/PA for a pastoral forum in a couple of weeks. I am honored to join several other pastors to grow in pastoral training and also to continue the legacy of our beloved Gregg Strawbridge.
Lenten Cheers,
Uriesou Brito