Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, October 20, 2019
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God deserves our dancing in the streets with reckless abandon.
The ark of the covenant had been stolen in battle and was in the enemy’s possession for twenty years. Finally, King David fought the Philistines and recovered the ark. At first, David was reluctant to house the ark in his city; Uzzah, one of the men carrying the ark had reached out to steady it on route and the Lord struck him dead. Although it seems like a stiff punishment for an honorable intention, God had made it very clear that God was too holy for mortals to look upon, and the ark was too holy for anyone other than priests to touch. It’s not that God punished him for his behavior—no, the ark was simply too powerfully holy for Uzzah to endure. Nonetheless, David was afraid of the raw power the ark contained, and he left it in the care of the nearby household of Obed-edom for three months.
But then, once David learned that Obed-edom’s household was blessed because he housed the ark, David found the courage to bring the ark into his city. (Either that, or he just wanted the blessings for himself.)
Once the ark was in its home in David’s city, David was so overjoyed, he danced in the streets in his underwear. (Yeah, that’s basically what an ephod is.) When his wife, Michal (Saul’s daughter who really hated David), scolded him for his vulgarity, David proclaimed that he would do even crazier things than that for joy of the Lord.
I wonder what it might take for me to be so overjoyed with the Lord that I would leap and dance in the streets in any clothing, much less underwear. What are those moments for me—those moments so beautiful and rare that rejoicing is necessary? The birth of my three children comes to mind. Do I need to limit my rejoicing to those rare moments? No, if I look, I can find moments worth rejoicing nearly every day. Dance. Sing. Rejoice. God is worth it.
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