Pherrell Williams' "Happy": Why Can't We Dance?

Why Can't We Dance? (Caution: Uncensored Happiness ahead)

No matter how you are feeling today, would you take four minutes and see what happiness can do to a soul,  body and face? 

But how far away, how foreign this can feel! Why Can't we dance? 


Sometimes we are too sad to dance.  I meet friends when I'm out shopping, and I see their heavy faces, and soon we are emptying our hearts into each other, and the weight sinks us down to our feet, and we can hardly walk out of the store . . . .  And I know not what to do except pray. (But I cannot dance.)

Sometimes we are too angry to dance----or even to go to church. (Shall I tell you how angry I was the morning of the Sabbath?  The words, ohhhhh, the words and the hurt! A gift wasted.  And then we slink off to Church together, wondering how we will sit together . . . .)  We will not be dancing together  this day . … yet. 

And sometimes we are just plain ugly on our feet, you know? I believe in grace, God's wondrous grace, but my body cannot always live it out, uncoordinated mess that I am.  How fair is this, that some move like water, some curl and swirl and lift like steam, and some move like chunks of ice? Why did He make us so different?


Sometimes we can't hear the music. We hear only the thud of our own heart and it carries no harmony, no sweeping melody that lifts our feet higher than a shuffle. We have no ears to hear beyond ourselves.

Sometimes we don't believe in Dance. Or joy. We think God wants us to stay sad, and broken and imprisoned. That happiness is for fools and children. Who can lift their heads and hands and feet and sway and leap when wars are roaring, the mountains collapse, and planes disappear? How then do we dance?

Listen. There is more than one kind of dance. There are times and seasons. Yes, tragedy is always present in the world. We can watch it, suffer with others, and when it's time, we can turn away. This is not all of the world. There is yet joy here too where some dare to follow their feet . ..

It comes even to penguins. 

But a cartoon and a cute penguin named Happy Feet is not enough to make me happy.  It is Jesus, who stepped and limped and fell all the way to the cross, carrying our sorrows and burdens and our sins with Him. He is Lord of the Dance, who,"for the Joy set before Him," endured the cross, despising its shame. Because of that, those limping steps, yesterday in church my husband and I linked hands and forgave each other . .. a private dance in our pew. And the friend and I prayed together, our heads and hands in a dance of prayer. And if we listen carefully, we'll hear it … the melodic pulse of a living, thriving world around us . . .

Because of Him, we have so many reasons to dance. And though I am pathetically awkward, I want to grab your hand and kick up a shoe with you. Or at least, can we watch others together? Here, even those who do not know Him or name Him, dance because of Him---because He himself is Life, and Love and Joy and Strength. Can you see it? 

I wish you this same joy and delight in life. In Him.