Serving The Lord "Right Merrily"

When I lived in London for two years I used to attend a dance class twice a week. It wasn’t like social dancing or ball room dancing, but the kind of dancing you see in the film “Footloose”. I actually owned and wore leotards and leggings – note the plural! The one thing that I didn’t like was the mirror. It was across one wall of the studio and the idea was you were supposed to look at yourself in the mirror as you danced and check your posture. I have never really been into mirrors. The less I see of the whole of me, the better I like it. I am not one for preening.

At the age of twenty two I was one of the oldest in the class and certainly one of the least agile. I did have a lot of determination and plugged away at the choreography to learn the routines. It was like being on the cast of Fame Academy! I just saw it as being a way to let off steam. I was teaching, at the time, in a tough East End of London Secondary school where you got to confiscate guns and knives and where the pupils did sometimes literally swing from the light bulbs!

I had forgotten all about that when I was in a shop a few months back and they were doing a clear out of all DVDs and CDs and things. I picked up a dance DVD produced by the Pineapple dance studio in London. It promised that I can learn the latest dance moves. They are probably not the latest any more!

There were no leotards and leggings but loose baggy t-shirts, trousers with the crotch somewhere down by the knees, baseball caps on backwards and a choreographer that kept saying “Go, girl!” Do I qualify as a girl at my age?

I guess these things are not designed for the overweight woman of advancing years. I was managing quite well for the first eight bars. I managed the turn, the star jump and unfolding my arms in front of me. Things deteriorated rapidly with a complex footwork routine, thrusting out my ample bosom in various directions. Then we were supposed to crouch down and shimmy upwards whilst gyrating the bum. It was all very Hip Hop and in the end I abandoned myself to the sheer joy of flinging my arms and legs about to the music. (I bet King David didn’t employ a choreographer when he danced before the Ark of the Covenant as he brought it into Jerusalem!)

I know that I probably had the option of sitting down for half an hour and praying, or doing an in depth Bible study, or even just soaking – but you know what? I really enjoyed my prancing about and I laughed so much that my sides ached.

In a recent visit to London, Joe and I went to Covent Garden. There is a church there – St Paul’s. It is dedicated to actors. All around the walls there are plaques in memory of different playwrights, actors, musicians and artists. One of them, I am not sure of the name, Margaret Someone-or-other, particularly stirred my spirit. The epitaph read “She served the Lord right merrily.”

May that be said of me – “She served the Lord right merrily.”

My Year of Jubilee

It was my fiftieth birthday on Friday and, unlike so many people reaching a milestone like that, I am thrilled to be this age! Part of it comes from looking much younger than my years. I have had a hard time convincing people that I am fifty. Perhaps if there were a few more obvious wrinkles and stuff I might feel differently.

On Thursday, during a prayer meeting, God said, “Do you know, Mel – it’s your year of Jubilee?” Jubilee years were celebrated every fiftieth by the Israelites and all the instructions are in the Old Testament.

I know about Jubilee years because the concept crops us in one of our units of work – to do with debt cancellation. The Jubilee Debt Campaign that began in 2000 picks up on the practice of cancelling debts.

Doing a little bit more reading up on it – there are essentially two aspects to a Jubilee year - rest and release.

The rest part of it is a reminder that it is linked into the idea of a Sabbath day rest. Just as on the Sabbath day the Jews were restrained from everyday tasks, the ground they grew their crops on also had a Sabbath rest. Every seventh year the soil was rested and the Jews just ate what grew naturally. A Jubilee year is a Sabbath of Sabbaths.

Picking up on this idea of rest, my first inclination was to announce that I would be stepping down from leading worship, preaching, teaching Sunday school and attending mid-week meetings. Rest, eh? No work? The idea didn’t last that long as the Spirit quickly corrected me that is was the absence of “unnecessary work” that was called for. All the energy that I expend on fretting and worrying and striving for stuff – that was what one was to cease doing!

As time goes on, when you have been a Christian fro a while, things creep in – you add to what God has already done – attending meetings, reading the word, praying – some of these things become opportunities for collecting “Brownie Points”. You add to God’s salvation and have a list of “must dos” that you don’t really have to do at all. You do them not to earn Brownie points but because you love to draw close to God. Resting is about not giving that kind of stuff Brownie point power, but just reminding yourself it is all down to the blood of Jesus alone.

The release bit of Jubilee happened when everyone was released from the debts they owed others. Not only were the debts wiped away, but everything you had sold to pay off your debts, whether that be property, personal belongings or yourself into slavery – everything was restored back to its original owner. You owed nothing and you possessed everything. It happened perhaps once in a lifetime if you lived that long!

Release for me comes in receiving back all the stuff that I have “sold” over the ages. My debts were wiped away on the cross and the day I accepted Jesus invitation to surrender everything was restored to me. However, life kicks in and however much you like to think otherwise, over time you might surrender things that you shouldn’t, perhaps for an easier life. You might surrender your passion because when others stomp on it, you withdraw just a little. Disappointments perhaps have a way of redefining your picture of God, or your expectation of what He would wish to accomplish through you. I know that these things are always something you should fight for, and go back time and time to God to have corrected. But wear and tear corrodes many things given enough time.

I am not the same person I was when I became a Christian many years ago. I have gained a lot I never had before, but I have also surrendered at lot of things I should have held on to. This Jubilee year I aim to receive those things back by the grace of God.

I am not sold into slavery but have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb ant it is time to let go of the slave mentality!

So for my Jubilee year I will establish the habit of resting and letting loose the Brownie points, and I will have released to me all the things I am entitled to have. It promises to be a humdinger of a year!