The Rhythm of God

I am one of the most un-rhythmic people I know - my life is like reading a good book but you keep losing your place. I need a book mark, and a way to remember what I’ve read and where I am in life. Maybe you are like me.

Others are rhythmic to a point of tedium. T.S. Eliot writes of his regimented rather than rhythmic culture in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Let us go then, you and I,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go through… streets that follow like a tedious argument….

To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Do I dare disturb the universe?

For I have known them all already, known them all:
have know evenings, mornings, and afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

How do you measure out your life? Meetings, weekends, parties, dates, nights out, nights in, vacations, classes, holidays, sports… I’m not sure if any of these are much more nurturing for the soul’s rhythm than coffee spoons. At least, by following these lesser rhythms, we don’t have to worry about disturbing the universe.

Jesus, however, the Ultimate Disturber, seemed to judge his culture based upon their chosen rhythm. Using a dance analogy, he scolded the “keepers of societal rhythm” for their lack of imagination and unwillingness to join in the rhythm of God:

To what can I compare this generation?
They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”
(St. Matthew 11:16-17)

Jesus’ generation did not hear God’s rhythms. Whether John the Baptist’s mournful tune and Jesus’ party mix, they simply didn’t dance. They just sat there and measured out their lives in the first century equivalent of coffee spoons. They followed a societal rhythm that was leading to them to death rather than life.

It seems that whatever dictates our rhythms has claim on our soul. If your driving rhythm is work, then work has your soul. If your driving rhythm is a relationship, then that has your soul. To live by a rhythm other than God’s is like trying to learn to dance without listening to the music, doing the polka to Earth, Wind & Fire.

To what shall I compare this generation?

Those who seek to follow the ways of God have always found and nurtured God’s rhythm in life. Embedded in our design and brought to consciousness in the generation of The Exodus, our Sacred Scriptures offer us three Divine Rhythms:

I am going to rain bread from heaven for you,
and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for the day. (Exodus 16:4)

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord... (Exodus 20:8-10)

Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. (Exodus 23:14)

In these Divine Rhythms we find our soul: a daily rhythm to remind us of our dependence, a weekly rhythm to offer us rest, and a seasonal rhythm to instill in us hope. May we find ourselves as we dance mightily within our Holy Design becoming dancers and poets of the soul and not simply mindlessly keeping in step with the latest rhythm.

Soul poets embrace hope that God’s rhythm – unlike our own – is always on time, always in perfect measured beat to his purposes.
– Joy Sawyer, Dancing to the Heartbeat of Redemption