A Graceful Heart

The audience stared in awe. Leaping across the floor, a dancer, clad in a brilliantly sparkly and flattering dress, twirled and glided with moves of liquid. She had the crowd in the palm of her hand. The judges were seated in front of her. Brightly, her face radiated joy as she did move after move with extreme grace and agility. Her arms were like feathers in the wind, freely flowing from her body. The folds of shining fabric like a picture frame surrounding her beautiful athletic figure. When her routine came to a close the crowd thundered their applause; the girl beamed as her coach pulled her into a hug. Soon the applause faded; the scores had come in. The many layers of dance make-up and glitter began to smear as tears flooded from the girl’s eyes; her score was not pleasing. Points had been deducted. The audience booed. The dancer was crushed. The crowd was confused. In the eyes of the audience, her performance had been perfect; she had wowed them with her grace. How could they possibly have given her that kind of score? As the coach and dancer approached the judges, they were countered with a one-word answer. Feet. Although the crowd was not watching the way she placed her feet; the judges were, and she was deducted many points for not being in “turn-out“. Her feet were parallel, not angled to the side. The once joyful dancer, now sulked to her dressing room; the audience was left stunned.
We can fool the world. Coming across as a saint, we can easily give a little to every charity that we come upon. Dramatically, we can place our money in the offering plate, with a look of pure sacredness on our glowing faces. We can put on an amazing performance; one that will wow our audience. What about the judges? In this case, Judge. What is He, our all-knowing God, looking at? Our feet. More importantly, our heart. What are our motives? How are we grounded? Where is our foundation? We can put on an amazing show, traipsing around flamboyantly preaching to people and convicting them of their sin. We can come across as holy, but in the shadows fall to the same sins that we preach against. We can wow our audience, however, when it comes to points, we fail to realize that the only one in the audience that matters is the Judge.
In our lives we often find it so easy to gracefully glide around on our “sacred cloud” lecturing people about sin, when we fail to look at our own. We fail to look at our foundation. Our feet. Our hearts. In the end we will get deducted many points. Our performance may have been perfect; we may have wowed our audience. We may have left them in shock, left them thinking, “Wow, that person is amazing. They give so much.”, or “Wow, listen to20them talk. They must love God so much.” However, if our feet, or our hearts for that matter, are not positioned correctly, our performance is meaningless. We need to keep our eyes on God, our Judge, and ask him to give us a firm foundation. Whole-heartedly, we need to talk the stage, when we do however, we need to remember that we dance for an audience of one. Living our life as a beautiful dance for Jesus, Christians need to go forth and shine for our creator, always keeping in mind to keep our feet grounded. Christians should not boast what they can do to the world, but rather we need to use our gifts to boast what God is. By keeping a clear mind, we can achieve this. We need firm feet. We need a graceful heart.