August 10, 2004
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Give God Your Worst
U_G_N preached a great sermon this Sunday on King David’s life and being a man or woman after God’s own heart. One memorable incident was when David celebrated the return of the ark by dancing before God. Dancing like a madman, flashing the whole city, and scandalizing his wife.
What can we learn from this? Two lessons come quickly to mind: 1) We should value the opinion of God more than that of other people, and 2) God wants us to love him so much that we are willing to do crazy things for him. Like breaking an expensive jar of perfume on his feet. The same way men will do crazy things to propose, writing poems and spending thousands of dollars on rocks.
There is another subtler lesson I got: God wants our worst as well as our best. David’s dancing was not a premeditated, well-practiced, and artistic movement. It was not synchronized swimming or ballet. It was more like a guy in his underwear, whooping it up, hooting and hollering because his team has just won the Superbowl. Raw and real.
For me personally, that’s kind of hard to swallow. Because I’m all about excellence, and doing things right, and giving my best to God. For me to get out of that performance mindset, to give something unprocessed and un-thought-out — that’s not very comfortable. But the same God that asks for the sacrifice of the fattened calf and the firstfruits of the harvest also seeks out the lepers, the outcast, and the rejected. Maybe many of us — myself included — need to learn to give God not only our best, but also our worst.
Comments (8)
very good post, thanks. i agree, it’s harder to give our worst than our best. especially in america. who ever celebrates the losers?!
…without the underwear….
sometimes I feel like I only show Him the worst. =(
that’s how i feel too marmite… but thank God that He is God and we are not!
True. True.
We should not abuse grace.
David may not have coreographed his specific dance moves. But, he did carefully plan his celebration.
In the beginning of the chapter, David was also celebrating with all his might the first time he tried to bring the ark to Jerusalem. But, he didn’t bring the ark into the city properly, and so God killed the person who was transporting the ark. David was scared to finish bringing the ark to Jerusalem for several months.
When David finally did bring in the ark, he did so in a deliberate, scripted manner to avoid repeating his earlier mistake. He had the ark carried by people. After the people carrying the ark had taken precisely six steps, David sacrificed a bull and fattened calf. He made a final, large sacrifice when the ark arrived. He gave gifts to everyone who arrived for the celebration. And, he arranged for trumpets to play during the ark’s procession.
In the midst of all this, David danced and celebrated to God. This doesn’t mean that his joy was any less genuine or uninhibited than if it were spontaneous. Perhaps David wore his linen ephod precisely because he planned to dance and leap all day and figured he would become hot. David anticipated this great event and prepared his best for it (after being punished for not properly preparing the first time). But, he also celebreated with sublime, unashamed joy once the event arrived.
It’s true we don’t know the exact details about the linen ephod. Some scholars speculate that it was underwear, others think that he might have exposed his genitals by jumping around in a loose-fitting garment. I wonder how much thought and preparation he put into his clothing choice that day?