This post is a follow-up to one I wrote shortly after Training Camp, entitled “The man who danced.” You can find it by clicking on the “view all posts” option on the left of the page.
India. For the first time since Swaziland the entire squad was together for ministry again. This time it would only be for a week before we split off to our individual ministry locations, but it was good to be back living with everyone again.
We were staying at a school in Assam, which is located in northern India – not even on the subcontinent that we all think of when we think India. The region is fairly close to the neighboring counties of Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Burma.
India may be very diverse, but there’s one thing that the entire country can agree on: the heat. Ceiling fans in our rooms provided relief when the power was on, but many of us discovered that the coolest place on the property was on the roof.
A good number of people pitched their tents on the roof and slept there, while others held team meetings or personal devotional time up there. One evening, Kyle announced that he was going to take his guitar up to the roof to worship and invited anyone interested to come along.
I didn’t go right away, but I eventually wandered up to the rooftop to see how it was going. Kyle stood and played his guitar on the rooftop while two of my other squadmates sat nearby journaling. I briefly watched from a distance and then approached, wanting to participate, but as I came closer I discovered that Kyle wasn’t playing any worship songs I knew. Instead, he worshiped a bit more freely, singing his own choruses and improvising prayers to be sung over the guitar.
It’s interesting to listen to, and I genuinely enjoy it, but as someone who likes a bit more structure I found it difficult to sing along. So I stood around for a bit, kind of humming along and making up harmonies.
That got old really quick; I didn’t feel like my heart was in it. I thought about leaving and giving up on organized worship for the night.
And then I had the urge to dance.
I had danced in worship before, the first time being at Training Camp. Since then, I have become much more free and a bit more bold in my movement during worship. As someone who once always stood perfectly still, I am now much more apt to lift my hands, and I will often step to a beat, but more often than not I wouldn’t call it “dancing.”
But there I was, on a roof, with a crazy urge to dance relentlessly before the Lord. No one was looking at me or even facing my direction, so my usual self-consciousness wasn’t a factor.
So I danced, with more passion and more energy than I ever had in my
life. It wasn’t pretty – I am not the most coordinated and it must have looked pretty bizarre, but as I’ve said before, David danced to the point where even his wife called him undignified. (Although unlike David, all of my clothes stayed on).
For maybe half an hour I danced and didn’t stop, even when I was out of breath and absolutely drenched in my own sweat. I didn’t care. I spent every ounce of energy I had and invested it into dancing on the roof. As far as I was concerned, no one was up there except for me and God.
It’s difficult to recall a moment in which I felt more free than this one. My worship is not bound by songs or words or even anything planned – sometimes you just have to dance on a rooftop.
