Psalm 28:7 The Lord is my strength and my shield;
    my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.
My heart leaps for joy,
    and with my song I praise him.

David knew how to thank God! That is a lesson anyone should be able to get by reading through the Psalms. In the verse ahead of this we see that he had been given assurance that God had heard his prayer, and this is his response. We don’t know how he was given that assurance, whether by external events or simply by hearing the Lord in his heart, but that’s not a major issue. When we are aware of God acting on our behalf, however that comes about, we should express thanks to Him. The NIV does a better job of matching the Japanese here than the ESV does. The ESV says “exults,” where the NIV says “leaps for joy,” and the Japanese says “dances for joy.” We aren’t to hold back in expressing our thanks to God! A young man who was in this church as a child over 20 years ago is currently in a Christian dance troop, and they have recently toured Europe. I think he knows a lot about dancing for joy before the Lord! Like almost everything else good, dancing can be and has been appropriated and polluted by the devil, but that’s no reason to cede it to him. Just watching children will teach you that we are designed to move to music, and squelching that can do a lot of harm. We are to submit our whole selves to God, specifically including our bodies, and dancing can and should be an expression of that.

At one point in my youth I considered going into ballet, since I have always had unusually flexible hips, but I never studied dance. The closest I came was in being one of the “dance chorus” in a production of Finian’s Rainbow in college. However, I have always liked to move to music, and I am often in motion during the praise and worship time in our services. I anticipate that dance will very much be a part of our joy in heaven! However, as in everything else, I am to be careful that the focus is on the Lord, and not just on my pleasure. At 75, my dance moves are far less extravagant than they once were, but I know that in heaven all limitations will be removed, and I look forward to that!

Father, I ask You to continue to grow me in thanking You accurately, in worshiping in spirit and in truth. May my whole life be an expression of thanks and praise to You, because You are certainly worthy of all that and more. Thank You. Praise God!