Spinnin' Around

There's a song I love, or used to love (I haven't heard it in a while), called Spinnin' Around. It talks about how God's ways are completely backward from the world's ways:

A is last, Z is first
Living life in reverse
'Cause that's the way it works

You can check out the rest of the lyrics here. This song is so true. God's Word tells us that you must be last to be first, you need to be weak to be strong, you need to die to live....

I was watching So You Think You Can Dance last night and there was a dance done by the final two girls depicting a journey. They started at one end of the stage and "journeyed" toward the other end. There were times when they'd move forward, sometimes backward. Sometimes they'd leap, sometimes they'd fall. Sometimes they looked graceful, sometimes their bodies were contorted. Their skirts were made of layers of fabric and throughout their journey they'd shed layers.

It got me thinking about life and its supposed burdens. We all have a journey and places we need to go to in life. My husband likes to say that if the journey is easy you are moving in the wrong direction (I have such a wonderfully smart husband). Along the journey it seems like sometimes we move forward, and rarely are we graceful, but mostly we are falling, or being stopped, or contorting, or moving backward. The causes of these delays and these discomforts are what we refer to as burdens. I love the dance because they aren't putting on the layers, the layers are coming off.

That's why I said supposed burdens. Are they really burdens or the instruments used to break us out of the confines that are limiting our potential? And if that's the case should we stop fighting them and dreading them? If they are really tools used to better us and we recognized them as such would our journey transform? Would the process become shorter and less painful and the recovery process quicker? Would we need less of them because we would no longer be damaged in the fight against them? Or because we actually learned something from them?

What are you fighting against right now? Take a moment and try to see it as a tool God is using to free you. I know it's hard, but really try. How could this new perspective change things?