Space to Dance

Jock Stein September 20, 2026 5 1

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Exodus 15: 19-21 (NIVUK)

19 When Pharaoh’s horses, chariots and horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought the waters of the sea back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. 20 Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. 21 Miriam sang to them:

‘Sing to the Lord,
    for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
    he has hurled into the sea.’

Beethoven was once asked what one of his symphonies meant. “If I had known how to put it into words,” he growled, “I wouldn’t have needed to write the music!” So I’ll give you a poem about this song of Miriam instead of words of explanation:

End Time Music

Give me a high trumpet, give me a low trombone,
Give me a fiddle, a flute, a sax with attitude,
Give me a Bosendorfer with a deep deep tone
and sing me the song of Moses and the Lamb.

Those harps are just a symbol of the orchestra
of heaven, when the universe is jumping
at the judging of the tyrants, where the register
of justice needs the beat of the bodhran.

Add in cymbalon and sitar, bongos, bass guitar,
for these songs are universal, and the world
is queuing up to learn how things really are
when that whistle blows, and time goes down the pan.

When you experience God at work, you have a sense of being ‘out of this world’, beyond time, and yet you are as present to everyone and everything as Miriam was. It’s so great that ‘these songs are universal’, so we can listen to Miriam in her context, and hear a greater song, as in the book of Revelation.

PRAY

Lord God, we marvel that every so often, all over the world people dance with happiness at tyrants being overthrown, at folk being healed, at wonderful signs of your kingdom breaking into human affairs. Whether or not it’s happening around us, we take extraordinary pleasure in knowing that you are at work, and joyfully get moving on the dancefloor of our spirit. Amen.