Celebration - Jason

As we live life, we have lots of celebrations. We celebrate pregnancies, births, graduations, marriages, engagements, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s day, anniversary’s, New Years, Thanksgiving, and on and on. Then there are the little things – an exam passed, a game won, etc. There are lots of opportunities for celebration.

Recently, a Dominican pastor asked us to come to Sunday night service, because his 6 month old daughter was going to be dedicated. We could tell that this was important to him and so we made sure that we were there. It was pretty incredible. The father/pastor bought a cake for the congregation - it would have been a sacrifice for him to do it, but he was so happy about this opportunity. They decorated the church with balloons and streamers. The service revolved around this event. People dressed up, the baby was in a nice dress, relatives and friends were there, etc. The family stood up front and there were two witnesses with them to symbolize the agreement the parents were making before the Lord that they would do what they could to raise this child to walk with Him. It was serious, but it felt momentous.

During the singing, there was a little dancing (lots of percussion makes that easy) and then the service was over and it was time to eat the cake. This is the part that really struck me, so I am going to drag this out for a minute. What would happen at your event if it were time to eat the cake? What if the event was a church service which was supposed to start at 6PM and it was now 10PM? Most of the time, the cake is cut and there are servers there trying to make sure everyone has a piece…and there may be some frustrated folks upset about the timing.

But this was such a treat that they didn't cut the cake right away, instead they all took pictures with it. Group shots, individual shots, etc. The family even wanted a picture with our family behind the cake. All the while they were scraping frosting with their fingers and sticking it on people's faces and laughing it up. Imagine that – do adults do that?! They do this little kiss thing on the cheek here and one lady had frosting on her face and then kissed another lady – smearing frosting on her cheek. Finally, they cut the cake, laughing and joking the whole time. No rush, just enjoying the moment.

It was so much fun to watch. I was thinking about David dancing before the Lord as the ark made its way into Jerusalem. When Michal got upset with him, he said – “I will celebrate before the Lord.” For me, this experience was a reminder to celebrate before the Lord. Slow down, enjoy the event, and consider the joy that God intended for this moment. I think we Americans are at a disadvantage when it comes to this kind of celebration, because we always have so much more to do…we complain about being busy, but we like it. But does the busyness get in the way of genuine celebration? Is there an aspect of celebration that is a choice or do we believe that genuine celebration only happens when we are caught up in the moment?