Being Asked To Dance

Then young women will dance and be glad,
    young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness. - Jeremiah 31:13

The pictures that unfold in this chapter are neither bland nor tame. There’s shouting for joy and wine flowing. To the broken and mourning, Yahweh makes the promise that dancing will come. This is not a tame celebration - it’s a picture of a wildly inclusive and festive kingdom, which Jesus inaugurates upon his incarnation.

As individual Christians, we can easily value our own comfort instead of the radical call of Jesus to love those who are truly other. Sometimes, to serve the status quo, churches like to take nod to passages like these but not really make the real changes necessary to see the kingdom come in all its fullness. When it comes to welcoming in different kinds of people, we so easily settle for diversity. The modern prophet Verna Myers has a word for us:

Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.

- Verna Myers

Where have you settled for a less-than-dancing approach to welcoming others?