Day 69- A Dancing First

Today, I danced in church for my "first." There were even other people there.  Like, a church full of people.

What would possess me to do something like that, you might ask.  A Ugandan young man named Nassim took me by the hand and led me to the stage where his choir was singing and dancing and what can you do but join in?  We had a children's choir from Uganda at our church tonight called Ugandan Thunder.  They are a choir made up of mostly orphans from Uganda and they tour the U.S. raising money to feed over 5000 children in Uganda.  They are also staying in some of our homes for the next three days.

Irene and Ivan are staying with us!

I know, I know, there are no pictures of me with the choir dancing.  That's because dancing on stage with Ugandan Thunder is a bad time for a selfie and Laura was picked to dance onstage as well. I'd like to think there are no pictures at all of this particular "first" for the year, but I'm not that naive to think that nobody in that crowd got a picture.

Two things were encouraging about this to me.  One was that Nassim just smiled at me the whole time I was trying to follow his moves. The key word in that sentence is trying.  The other was near the end of the song (an upbeat Ugandan version of  "I Saw the Light" if you can picture that) a young lady in our church named Amanda who was also on stage looked at me and said, "Whew, I'm tired."  I was tired as well and was glad someone probably 25 years younger than me was, too.

The tendency for me in a situation like that is to make excuses and not risk looking silly in front of a bunch of people.  Especially people you pastor.  My mindset is usually to say, "Not me, I can't dance or I don't want to do that."  Looking silly or ridiculous is something I definitely don't enjoy.  Sometimes you just need to jump in. If you look silly, just remember, it's not about you.  We say that in church a lot- it's all about Jesus and not about us.  Truthfully, we think about us a lot.  We tend to think what others are thinking of us, saying about us, and what their opinion of us is.  Timothy Keller wrote in his book The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, "The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less. Gospel-humility is not needing to think about myself."

Dancing for the abundant life
Barry

3 things I thank God for today
1. Irene
2. Ivan
3. Ugandan music