It is difficult to believe it is the dead of winter when I am sitting on the front porch sweating in my tee shirt and the dogs are lying on the grass basking in the sixty degree sun. It would have been relaxing even, except that every time a person walked by on the street, the dogs felt it necessary to alert everyone as far away as Outer Mongolia. Being a conscientious dog owner, I of course stride over to them, tell them to be quiet and occasionally even clamp a hand around a muzzle.... but it doesn't matter. Every single time, they feel the passerby is a grave threat and their dog alarm system detonates.
Then after the dire threat has strolled on, they settle back on the grass and attempt to look dignified, as though it were their timely and effusive guarding that prevented dire awful things from happening to all of us. But Lucky settles back down with a leaf stuck to his scruffy chin. He seems unaware it is there and it bobs in the warm sunny breeze. It totally undoes his look of dignified authority.
And while I laugh at him, it was not so funny when it happened to me. I had recently spent an hour talking with someone important.... I can no longer recall who. When I came back inside and walked by a mirror, I noticed I had a big blob of broccoli stuck in my front tooth. Every time I had smiled, or opened my mouth to speak, every word that passed through me was filtered by a vision of broccoli in my teeth. I buried my head and muttered, "Oh cruel, cruel world!"
It is impossible to pretend any of us should be taken seriously.... ever. We are all prone to broccoli sticking in our teeth, and don't think it hasn't happened to you. It has, but you may not have known it, which is a blessing, to be sure. It is the main reason that I am not president- who could endure that kind of scrutiny 24/7 for years? I find unspeakable things sticking where they shouldn't far too many times to think I would want a camera pointing at me nonstop.
But perhaps dignity is not what we should be aiming for. My favorite Bible verse regarding dignity is when King David is returning the lost ark of God back to its rightful place. He is dancing like a madman, and his wife tells him, "David you are a flaming idiot. You look like a jerk in front of all these people. You may as well stick broccoli in your teeth."
Now these are not her exact words, but a close approximation. David doesn't care how he appears to others though. He only cares that he be joyful before God, and understands that his own dignity matters not at all. He tells her, "You haven't seen anything yet. I can become even more foolish, more undignified, more humiliated.... but as long as it is celebrating before my God, it really doesn't matter!" (Every wife in the group knowing what husbands are capable of in the undignified arena cringed at this point.)
But I love the sentiment, since it was not my husband dancing half naked like a maniac down the street. Be what you are unabashedly before God and don't worry about broccoli in your teeth or leafs hanging off your chin. Worry about dancing and barking and speaking unashamedly in the sight of the Master.
2 Samuel 6: 14-22
14 Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the LORD with all his might,
15 while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
16 As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD.
18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty.
19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
20 When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”
21 David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD.
22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”
