Feets don't fail me now

I remember watching this movie, one of those grainy 8mm or super 8 home movies of this kid so full of joy dancing in the living room in front of his parents and their friends. I wonder sometimes where that kid went; where they all went; where the joy went.

It did go away. Perhaps it was frightened by the pressures of life. Too many bills not enough cash, things grew hard, tempers flared and though they all stayed in the same room in the same house some of them left, and the kid stopped dancing. There was no one to dance for anymore.
The screams, the tears they didn’t last forever maybe not even a year but the kid didn’t know what happened. He just knew they had forgotten him.

It was the first time he had lost the security of friendship, of family. There was nothing more in the world that he wanted than to be loved. The truly sad part was that the love hadn’t really stopped but nobody bothered to tell him because they were so caught up in the pain of life that they forgot to speak to the kid. They forgot to say we love you, it’s not your fault, it’s not about you, we’ll get through this, it will be ok. They forgot to hug him and say oh baby we love you so much. They knew it but they forgot to relay the information.

And so the kid forgot that they loved him. He couldn’t see it. He only felt this emptiness where once there was this glowing joy that warmed his heart – that made him dance.

Fast forward 46 years and find a man feeling a warmth in his heart that stirs something deep inside. That old warmth; the urge to dance as the joy of friends and family fill his heart once again. It feels good but he hesitates as fear knocks upon his door. What if it leaves again? What if he lets that joy fill his heart and then it all comes crashing down around him just like before?

There are no guarantees that those fears won’t come true. On the creature side of things there are no guarantees in the sovereign God’s plan filled with time and chance. Time and chance – sometimes they seem like bastards that need to be destroyed. He hates the fear of uncertainty – the uncertainty of the certain plan. He fears that God is just teasing him, giving him a taste to only take it away down the road a ways.

He’s seen these things blow up before –over and over again get close and die, get close and cry, get close –why bother.

Then he feels the warm glow, the joy and he knows that no matter what comes he cannot turn away from the opportunity to dance even if he trips and falls.

Feets don’t fail me now.