The Dance

Sometimes in my spiritual life I feel that I take one step forward only to take two steps back. I really start to enjoy my time reading the Bible more than I ever have before; then suddenly my life becomes so busy and chaotic that I find myself struggling to read a few verses a day, if that. For a season my prayer times are deep and fulfilling; a month or so later my prayers seem to be ricocheting off the walls and ceiling of my room. Worse still, I find myself forgetting to pray at all.

Sound familiar? Most Christians seem to have similar experiences to mine. One day we're on the mountain top. The next day we're hacking our way through a dense, jungle valley. Engaging in the spiritual disciplines of regular prayer, scripture reading, etc. can help keep us on an even keel. Yet if the lives of all the saints who have gone before us are any indication, nothing can completely stop the cycle of ups and downs. Life, basically, is like a complicated dance, filled with the highest leaps and pirouettes that are balanced by times when the dancer collapses flat-out on the floor.

Perhaps the wisest course, then, is to work at maintaining our spiritual disciplines in order to shed light on our paths but to also try and not despair when we stumble for a time through the darkness. Our lives in Christ, just like our normal lives, may come with frustrations, but there are joys, too, just around the corner if we'll only look for them.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance

--Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 (NIV)

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