I was watching a video on fb that I thought had some amazing praise and worship. I’d viewed it a few times before and as things happen I managed to scroll past it when my daughter walked by one day. I told her to come as see it. As she got close I asked her to wait a second so I could turn the sound on. There are times when I’m without headphones and I’ll keep my phone on silent while I scroll. I’m sure you’ve done it before as well. Anyway, my daughter said something like,” I don’t need the sound to see what’s going on there.” This is where today’s story begins…
As a mother of some very talented children, I’m proud and feel blessed by their work. I had nothing to do with the God given talents my children have but I did nurture it as they grew up. I have children who sing, dance, draw and paint. One child is great with pottery and photography. It makes for some interesting things in our garage to say the least. Ask Dad about that. Personally, I’m a part of a great dance ministry at my church. I find so much joy in praising God through dance. I enjoy the music and how it changes the atmosphere on many levels. I’ve always loved music, dance and the arts. My oldest daughter creates wonderful art and has a degree in textiles. She graduated this year (Hallelujah!) and as a part of her final project she asked me to help her. I felt quite honored. You see, as she creates her artwork, she prays and worships God. She waits for God inspired instruction before she ever puts brush to paper or whatever medium she uses in the piece.
She asked me if I would dance over her while she created a piece with charcoal on canvas. It was a very large piece and I was ok with the idea until she said, “oh Yeah, I would like you to dance without the music and we’ll record the whole thing.” Honestly, I’d never danced without the music before-except when I’m learning a piece. Even in those situations we use the music as we go from section to section. As God instructs I do my best to follow. So, I agreed to help her. I asked her if she had a particular piece of music that went along with the piece-something I could listen to prior to the actual event. She provided a piece of music. I honestly had hope that we could still play the music in the background while we worked together. A good friend of mine took care of the video and we got started. We did the piece outside and as she recorded there was some light music playing. However, I couldn’t hear the music at all.
Several weeks before I did this I consulted with a good dance friend of mine. She’s deaf and she dances so beautifully that I knew she would be able to give me direction. I asked her about her ministry. I love watching her minister. She brings so much meaning to each piece that she does. I’m sure if you saw her dance you’d never know that she couldn’t hear the music with her ears. Truly she hears the music with her soul. She spends a lot of time watching the video, feeling the vibrations of the sound and viewing the lyrics while someone else is singing.
So, as I ministered I thought about the music that my daughter had provided. I thought about the words and did my best to dance to the song playing in my head and soul. After we finished I watched the work and realized that even though I couldn’t hear a thing while I danced I’d actually kept the tempo of the music she played. By the way it wasn’t the music she’d provided. I was too far away to hear the music at all.
When the project was completed, she brought me to the gallery to see the piece. On one side was the artwork and next to it was a monitor playing the video of us in the creation of the piece. No sound, just movement. When I first saw the complete piece I have to admit, I was speechless. I listened to people as they viewed the piece and I heard words like,” powerful, moving, inspiring”. The people viewed the piece and without explanation understood it’s meaning. The piece had charcoal which represented,” the carnality of man, an obedience servant-working to make things visible to the sinner and worship of the angels.” And I thought I needed the music to make it happen…
So many times, we feel that things can only go in certain sequences. A, B, C etc. you understand. Sometimes God will move differently. God always moves and does things in divine order you can be certain of that. But also, he expects us to move in faith. Believe before seeing or in my case move without music. Jesus asked Peter to throw his nets out after he’d fished all night bringing in nothing in the 21st chapter of John. When it was Peter’s idea it yielded nothing. However, when Jesus told him to do it on the right side of the boat he brought in more fish than he could imagine. Sometimes God will ask us to do something that seemingly makes no sense-like fishing in the same spot where you found nothing. However, obedience makes all the difference in what blessing we receive. Can you walk by faith or dance without sound?
Just keeping it Cristaclear
John 21:1-14