tutus and twirls

Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. (Proverbs 4:25)

Growing up, I took ballet lessons. I instantly fell in love with the dance as a kid. I mean, I LOVED it! I was always dancing. Whether at home, at school, or in the aisles of the grocery store, no one could keep my feet from moving to the music that played inside my head. While I loved every part of dancing, one of my favorite things in ballet class was doing pirouette turns. Turn after turn after turn (grocery store aisles are perfect for these)...I always felt like a princess spinning around on my toes!

The tricky thing about pirouette turns is that you can easily become dizzy from doing them. The key to turning without becoming dizzy is, of course, to fix your eyes on one stationary spot. With each turn, your gaze must come back into focus on that one particular spot at the end of each rotation. I can remember scanning the room for my selected focal point – a picture frame, a sign, a poster, or even my own reflection in a mirror. The focal point is a must. Otherwise...you're bound to end up in a giggling heap on the floor, pink tutu and all.

The same is true with our faith.

In Hebrews 12:2 the author writes, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

If we don't keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we're bound to end up in a heap of trouble and there’s not so much giggling in that heap! We're way too easily distracted by the things that the devil throws in front of us in an effort to trip us up and cause us to doubt God's goodness and ultimate plan for our lives.

As a dancer, It wasn’t enough for me to fix my gaze on any old object. I couldn’t choose a passing car or a person walking by because, naturally, I knew that they wouldn’t be in the same place by the time my head had whipped back around. I had to choose a solid, stationary object that I could rely on to remain stationary during the amount of time it took me to complete each rotation. When I apply that lesson to faith, I see Christ as the only solid and stationary object to concentrate on. My friends and family are there for me most of the time, but as humans with their own individual set of struggles and limitations…they’re bound to disappoint me eventually. Money evaporates quicker than water. The job market can be highly volatile. Vehicles and homes are subject to accidents and fires. The only true constant in this life is my relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s a good reason the Psalmist refers to God as our Rock!

We, as children of God, are often likened to sheep in the Bible. Psalm 100:3 says, “Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.” While sheep in children’s books are cute and fluffy creatures, the reality is that sheep are not known for being the smartest of animals. Sheep are easily frightened and are very slow, which makes them especially vulnerable to predators. They’re high maintenance in that they need the constant care and attention of a shepherd. They are so easily influenced by their peers that they will willingly follow one another right over the edge of a cliff to their death in pursuit of a few blades of grass. Isaiah 53:6 reads, ”We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Essentially, the smartest sheep is the sheep nearest his shepherd.

Thankfully, we're not sheep without a shepherd. Christ is our Shepherd and He has come for His lost sheep (Matthew 15:24).

Last week I spent a few days studying a short passage in Proverbs (4:20-27) as part of a daily Bible study I’m doing with some friends. Looking back at the verses again after having read them for several days in a row, I finally noticed a theme emerging from the text. The theme was one of obedience and position. Our Heavenly Father is omnipotent (all-powerful) and He is in control of all things. That doesn't mean that we accept Christ into our hearts, accept his gift of salvation, and then carry on in life doing as we please because we have been sanctified by the blood of Jesus and are thereby forgiven for all of our sins (past and present). A life given to Christ is a changed life. Not a perfect life…a changed life. The change begins with obedience.

Reading over those words in Proverbs over and over again, certain phrases jumped out at me. Listen to God. Memorize Scripture. Guard your heart. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Avoid lies and gossip. They were all commands, or rather demands for obedience to the Shepherd.

We will always be sinful humans. Our call isn't to be sinless (it's just not possible), it's to be obedient and to position ourselves in such a stance that we are ready (and more importantly, willing) to be used as tools of the Lord. It’s our responsibility to be putting our bodies in a position ready for worship…to be positioning ourselves as close to the Shepherd as we possibly can…to concentrate our focus on Christ as we traverse this dizzying pirouette-twirling journey called life. We're commanded by God to go to church (Remember the Sabbath Exodus 20:8), guard our hearts, and fix our eyes on Jesus. We don't do these things because they're wonder drugs for our moments of depression or supernatural maps to lead us in moments when we’re especially lacking direction. We do them out of obedience to God, knowing fully that He will bless us for our obedience. He will surely grant us our undeserved prize.

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)

I might be too old for the tutu now, but I’ll never be too old to fix my eyes on my Shepherd and dance for Him.



A side note: As I was writing this blog, I did a little research (ok it was VERY little so don’t bother asking me any questions later) on the behavior and nature of sheep. One thing that I found pretty interesting was that while sheep have excellent peripheral vision, they unfortunately have very poor depth perception. Dips in the terrain ahead of them, and sometimes even just shadows, will cause them to stop in their tracks or even retreat. As a result, sheep have a natural tendency to want to move out of darkness and into well-lit areas.

The same applies to us as the sheep of God’s pasture. Like sheep, our peripheral vision is 20/20. We are easily distracted, and consequently entangled, by the things that encompass us in this world. Our depth perception seems to be terrible in that we are always slipping and tripping and having to fall to our knees to ask forgiveness. I truly believe that there is something inside of us that causes us to naturally desire to move out of the darkness of sin and enter into the Light of God’s Truth.