What does it really mean to dance in dirty feet? At
seventeen years old, I began to understand. I went to Zambia, Africa on a mission
trip and I fell in love with the orphans; the shining gems. In my efforts of conveying
to them even a morsel of God’s love for them, they began to embed their
contagious faith and joyful spirits in me, teaching me a lesson I will never
forget. “Blessing” was her name. She, along with the other children in this area, lived
in clay huts and walked streets of entrenched trash every day, barefoot. She had never tasted purified water, worn new clothes, or owned a pair of sneakers. In the midst of my pitty for her I asked God, “What’s so good about me, to get a better life?” The answer
became clear when I took a deeper look. Her feet were filthy, her clothes were
tattered, but she was dancing. She had her hands reaching toward the sky, with
her grin full of gapped teeth, and she was singing a song about Jesus.
In every situation, in every moment, there is always a negative. On the contrary, there is always a positive. But why is it harder to seek out the good as opposed to the bad? It’s easier to linger in a place of darkness and despair because it takes less effort and requires no movement, yet we find it never brings lasting satisfaction. It’s a trap, Satan’s trap. They say the light is at the “end” of the tunnel for a reason. To reach it, it takes climbing mountains, trudging through thick grounds, wiping the dirt off our backs and the grime off our faces; never allowing these things to set us back. We do all this with steadfast faith that we will find the light: God, who is truth. As we trudge through valleys of unpredictable and wavering lands, our only chance of survival is to hold tightly to the one thing that will never bend; him. As we continue to give our hearts and lives to him, he opens our eyes to the positives; making us blind to the negatives just as when we were naïve children. We will be as pure as we were before the world infected our minds. We will walk, as some might call, in a state of oblivion, but what is so wrong with that? When the negative is impairment, a waste of precious energy, and something never meant to be seized in the first place, why would we continue to allow its presence in our lives? Refer to negatives in your lives as “set-backs”, as they WILL simply set you back, keeping you from finding the light at the end of the tunnel. As we learn to embrace this intended oblivion (or blindness), God will re-program our eyes to see the way he does. Then, we will discover real wisdom and strength that will lead us to the truth and happiness we all deserve to experience in this life.