After having been questioned about his identity, even by his own cousin and the prophet who was called to prepare the way for his coming, John the Baptist, Jesus began to reflect on the desperation of the spiritual situation that he had walked into as he entered the world:
To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.
Matthew 11:16-19
This generation of people, Jesus says, can’t seem to make up its mind. If a song that is intended for dancing is played, they won’t dance. If a song that is intended for mourning is played, they won’t mourn. No, instead, they will only doubt and will never believe. They prefer to call out that which they perceive, or they themselves consider to be the faults in the others and go on to ignore the message that they were receiving.
In many ways, we can say that this is still the same today. In a very similar way to how the Jews would not dance nor mourn in the days of Jesus, neither will we listen to the “music” that is being played today. The kingdom of darkness that rules our world tells us lies continually and we routinely listen to those lies, preventing us from reacting to the music that is being played. Instead, we remain distracted, continuing on with our regular routine, continuing on with our normal business, our daily life, never actually hearing the music and neither dancing nor mourning.
My prayer is that we would awaken, that God would shake us from the blindness and deafness that are the distractions that Satan has placed in the world all around us. Instead, I pray that we would hear the music that Christ has been playing and that we would dance, or we would mourn, moving to the rhythm that he has been sounding out, no longer distracted and unable to hear his call.