Nietzsche said that he would only believe in a “God who dances.”

As Mockingbird devotees, and survivors of three marriages, Debbie and I have come to believe in a dancing God. Yet, this view of God only came after years, many years, in which we didn’t.

A romantic courtship, with breathless excitement and anticipation of an American-dream marriage, quickly turned into a marriage of unmet expectations from both sides. Indeed, each of us hurt the other (albeit unintentionally) in the very fashion that would cause the most pain. We unknowingly tread upon the past hurts and expectations that each of us brought into the marriage.

Our marriage devolved into separate lives with no hope of reconciliation–none. We certainly didn’t believe in a dancing God–in one who could bring dance into our marriage. We believed in a God who rewarded effort and wise decisions. We thought we had married the wrong person. In fact, we each wished that the other was dead or that we were dead.

But then, the dancing God, the God we talk about at Mockingbird, stepped in. By God’s limitless grace, we both began learning of a God who knew the depths of our dark hearts–the true extent of our sinful flaws–but loved us nonetheless with His limitless, eternal love. Over the years, as we became more convinced of God’s unfathomable, eternal love for us, we began to love each other.

My favorite parable is the one concerning the “treasure in the field.” Virtually always, the “treasure in the field” is construed as the Kingdom of God. Yet, when you review the parables surrounding it (the lost coin, the lost sheep), it becomes abundantly clear (as I first learned from CI Scofield) that we are the “treasure in the field,” that Christ sold everything (gave His life) to purchase. The character of a Kingdom is determined by the character of the King.

This King is the savior and redeemer of individuals, of marriages, and of all creation. As Sally Lloyd Jones writes in Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing: “God made everything in his world and in his universe and in his children’s hearts to center around him–in a wonderful Dance of Joy! It’s the dance you were born for.”