The Song Beneath the Stories Part Six: the Music & the Dance

Our Fall Learning Cohort is a six-week exploration of the overarching theme of all of Scripture: The Gospel of Jesus Christ!

We’re offering the cohort in two ways:

  1. In-Person, Sundays at 9am

  2. Online via Facebook Live, Wednesdays at 7pm. These will be taught live, but will remain available for streaming afterward.

We’ll be posting the hand-outs for the sessions here on the blog. This week’s is The Song Beneath the Stories Part Six: The Music & The Dance.

For a downloadable PDF version, Click Here!

The Music & The Dance

I first heard this metaphor from Larry Kirk, pastor of Christ Community Church in Daytona Beach and I’ve found it a helpful way to think about what it means to find the music of the gospel as our song:

Imagine this scene: There’s a dancer in a studio. She puts earbuds in and hits ‘play,’ and because she hears the music she loves the best in all the world, she begins to dance. She’s captivated and enthralled by the music, so the dance flows out from her.  

A second dancer enters into the studio and looks at the first and thinks “that looks like fun!” And though she can’t hear the music herself, she begins to dance by copying the moves of the first dancer.

For a time, it works. Sort of. But because she can’t hear the music, her movements become clunky, hesitant, and self-conscious. She doesn’t enjoy the dancing the way the first dancer does, partly because it’s not springing from the music—it’s entirely dependent on her getting the moves just right without any help. And before too long, she runs out of energy and motivation. 

The past number of weeks, we’ve looked at the song beneath the stories of Scripture: the biblical symphony of Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration. Notice that the biblical symphony is primarily about God. It includes of us, of course. But at its core, it’s a song about God’s grace in creating, redeeming, and restoring. We are swept up into this story to find it as our own.

Our invitation is, like the first dancer, to hear this song and be moved into a life of responding to the rhythms of God’s grace. It’s his grace that sets the tone. It’s his grace that gives us rhythm. We hear the music and we dance. 

Many Christians are so concerned with the Dance that they completely miss the music. But if we can’t hear the music, then our dance will inevitably become out of rhythm and impossible to sustain. We’ll become like the second dancer, who tries to do the dance by simply learning and copying the steps. 

The question for us is this: When we are struggling, what’s our impulse? To beat ourselves up for missing a step? To try harder to get it right next time? 

What if, instead, we turn up the Music?

Thoughts for Reflection

  1. What are the ways that you’re tempted to focus on the Dance instead of the Music?

  2. What are some ways to “turn up the Music?”

Tim Inman