Sunday Selah

May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:23

It's spectacular when it happens.


It is transcendent.

And it only happens in moments of perfect unity.

You see it sometimes in dance.

You sometimes hear it in music.

It is that moment when the collection of dancers becomes so in sync with one another that the unified choreography of the individuals becomes a moving organism of its own.

It is that harmony of four singers that becomes so tight, so entwined in its frequency of pitch, that a 'fifth' voice is created, a voice created from the unity of the individual vocalists.

It is a phenomenon hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. You know it when you hear it.

To see a group of dancers move as one stirs our very hearts in its beauty and grace. To hear that fifth voice ring above the blend makes our souls soar.

It seems to touch a deep longing in each of us.

The ability to bring our individuality, our own gift, our own passion to the dance of life, to the song of the soul, and to be able to combine it with like people.

And then to experience something completely ethereal and inexplicable out of that unity of heart.

When we see that movement, when we hear that voice, could it be then that we have tapped into the very design God has for His church? Is that what touches us so deeply when we experience it in art?

For God creates us all as individuals. He knows and delights in the variety of knitting designs He stitches and purls. A drop of this, a dash of that. And a new take on His original human blueprint enters the world stage.

And yet, He asks us, in our quest to become the unblemished Bride, He asks us to be unified.

A unity of the unique.

A collective of the uncommon.

To bring our distinct dance and our solitary song, to bend and yield, love and sacrifice, until, within the confines of our corporeal bodies, we become undivided. We sing in perfect harmony. We dance in perfect step.

And something is then created that moves as one.

A dance of divine.

A fifth voice.

Selah.