I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. 2 Sam 6:21&22 NIV
When David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (2Samuel 6:12-22), he “danced before the LORD with all his might.” As the Ark was coming into the city, Michal (his wife, daughter of Saul) saw him “leaping and dancing before the LORD”. She reproached him and David replied, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes…”
I belong to a weekly gathering that meets virtually to prayer. Specifically we pray for evangelism and church planting work in a small African nation. Currently we are praying for 1000 villages that have no evangelical presence over a 60 day period which equates to approximately 17 villages per day. When we meet, we pray for that weeks’ villages taking turns each praying for one day’s names as we go around the “room”. The difficulty is in pronunciation. The villages are primarily tribal names. The names are transliterated by a french speaking native without any phonetic cues. The odds of us even coming close to the actual pronunciation of any of the villages is maybe 3 in a thousand!
As we stumbled and bumbled through the names on the list, it was difficult. We sounded foolish, like a little child making up words as he pretends to read aloud. It was far from dignified prayer!
What a gift!!!
It is a wonderful reminder of so many things – our GOD dependence, the work of the Holy Spirit (expressing the groaning of our heart when we don’t have the words), apart from Him we can do nothing, and the faithful, patient, understanding love of GOD…
When we are “humiliated in [our] own eyes”, we loose all forms of pretense, entitlement and self-importance. We can come to our “Daddy” in Heaven just as we are – little children, totally dependent on His grace, mercy and love.