In the summer of 2007 I attended the Nevada Star Ball to watch some of our dance buddies compete. Many of the competitors attended Brigham Young University. They were 20 years old and high energy with incredible stamina. For me, the highlight of the competition was watching them in the Quickstep competition.
In Quickstep couples travel counter-clockwise around the perimeter of the dance floor occasionally moving into the center for a special step. While the dance as a whole is breathtakingly fast, one segment gets even faster. The couples bide time in a corner of the dance floor. Then, when a straight-away opens, they make a sprinting-leaping-dash down it. I do not think I would be exaggerating to say they are traveling about 10 miles per hour.
The lady is not only moving at 10 miles per hour—she is moving backwards! What trust she must have in her partner! What if another couple decided to hesitate in front of them? What if another couple underestimated the time needed to make it out of the middle and back to the line of dance? The lady must trust her partner to make decisions about the best way to move around the room and finish the dance with all their limbs. If she decides she can’t trust him and looks over her own shoulder to assess what is happening, the weight of her head will throw them out of rotation and likely cause a pile-up.
And so it is in Christian marriage. (We are talking, here, about the “good-willed man” to use Emerson Eggerichs’ term. We are not talking about an abusive husband with uncontrolled anger.) The man is charged with choosing a safe and efficient path for his family and the wife is asked to trust. As we learn from Sarah in I Peter 3:5-6, that’s not just about trusting your husband, but trusting the Lord. If a wife decides to take matters into her own hands because it looks like her husband is making bad decisions, she can throw the whole thing out of synch. But if she hangs in there and trusts, she may be in for a breathtaking dance.
Trust
