Mechthild of Magdeeurg, a thirteenth-century mystic prayed, “I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me. If you want me to leap with abandon, you must intone the song. Then I shall leap into love, from love into knowledge from knowledge to enjoyment, and from enjoyment beyond all human sensations. There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.”
We want to be holy. We know it is God’s call on our lives. We even hear the desire to pursue holiness from people around us, and this makes us desire God’s will for us all the more. The only problem that arises from this longing for righteousness is, many times, our pursuit.
We read our bibles religiously, we drive ourselves toward sinless perfection, we pray harder and longer than ever before, and at the end of the day, we forget that it is God who makes us holy.
“I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.” This statement is a humble cry for the injection of a Holy Father into our very lives. It is a prayer seeking only the action of another, who has proven Himself to be capable and worthy.
Andrew Murray, a South African writer and teacher in the 1800′s, once wrote, “Often and often as we hear the call, Be ye holy, even as I am holy, it is as if there is and ever must be a great gulf between the holiness of God and man. IN CHRIST! is the bridge that crosses the gulf; nay rather, His fulness has filled it up.”