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Dancing
By Scott Harrup | July 10, 2008
I’m in a rut with entry titles, I admit. I promise to avoid a motion verb on my next post, but there’s really no other title that would fit this one.
The New York Times dedicated two online pages to Matt Harding on July 8. His claim to fame? A simple, uninhibited “dance” the 31-year-old video game designer performed around the world to create a truly joyful series of YouTube submissions with 5 to 10 million hits each.
Harding’s dance is more of a rhythm-enhanced jogging-in-place. The latest versions of the montage landed sponsorship from Stride chewing gum and underwrote Harding’s world travels while in no way commercially inhibiting his expression. Harding now includes professional orchestration and a lilting Bengali song with the dance.
The videos’ collective title can’t be posted on a church-magazine blog, but there’s plenty of message to resound with a life of faith. Each time I watch the clips of Harding as he convinces total strangers to copy his antics en masse, I think of the Bible’s repeated connections between dancing and serving God.
Second Samuel 6:14 describes how Israel’s King David, overcome with joy as he worshipped God, “danced before the Lord with all his might” (NIV). It wouldn’t surprise me if David’s public display of holy fervor looked like a rhythm-enhanced jogging-in-place.
“You turned my wailing into dancing,” the Psalmist says to God, “you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy” (Psalm 30:11).
There is so much that is troubling in this world, so many reports of conflict and hatred between people. Yet, in the midst of it all, God calls out to humanity to not only worship Him joyfully, but to love and serve one another sacrificially.
I’m convinced that the more we follow that divine directive, the more reasons all of us will have to throw aside our inhibitions and dance joyfully before our Creator.
Topics: News |
July 12th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Thank you for your encouraging article. I accidentally came across the dancing video because it was on the Boston Globe newspaper’s Web site. It is pure joy! I e-mailed Matt Harding, but I know I did not articulate well how I felt.
You did that.
Thank you.