It’s that time of year where a familiar song fills our home….

So You Think You Can Dance

Go ahead and get your shots in. Question my manhood. Ask to see my man card. Make some ridiculous comment of how I’ve lost control of my own television set. Say all those things.

I don’t care.

We love this show. All of us.

I love everything about it. I love Kat and her quirky interviews. I love how the judges unashamedly pull for the contestants. I love how even the worst of dancers are treated with honor and respect by the judges. I love how they always say positive things as well as constructive things. I love how they keep pushing people to dance. I love all of that.

But what I love most about the show…

The one thing this show gets right that no other contest show seems to get right…

Who are you dancing for today?

During the tryout episodes, this question is asked of every contestant. Not – why are you dancing. Not – what do you hope to accomplish. But – WHO are you dancing for?

Yes, that’s when the sappy music starts, and we get the story of dancing for a mom who is paralyzed due to a drunk driver, or a dad who has PTSD, or a grandmother that adopted them from trauma. There are hundreds of stories I’ve fought back tears on during this show. Yes, I know it’s a TV show that is trying to provoke an emotional connection to the person so you’ll watch the show. I get all of that.

But don’t miss the HUGE truth here. The producers know that at the end of the day WHO matters more than WHY. WHO will always trump WHY. WHO is a better motivator than WHY. It’s WHO that makes late nights, hard practices, and sore muscles worth it, not WHY.

Why, you ask? Simple. The WHY doesn’t last. The WHO does.

For 97% of these dancers, their WHY is going to end at the end of their 90 second tryout when they hear the words, “Thank you for coming today, but it’s a ‘no’ from me.” Thus ending the dream of being on the show, winning the prize, or landing a job in the dance industry. The WHY is over.

But the WHO…

Who are you dancing for?

This is the fundamental problem with Jonah. He’s lost his answer to this question. It’s debatable whether or not he ever had the right answer, but what is clear starting in Jonah 1 is this: Jonah is focused on the WHAT, and he’s focused on the WHY, but the last thing he’s focused on is the WHO.

We get this way, more often than we probably care to admit. We lose the Who are we dancing for answer. We’ll get distracted with deadlines, bottom lines, waistlines. We’ll forget the most important thing we can give our kids is a faith with the most wonderful WHO in the universe amidst a lot of other stuff that isn’t bad – it’s just that those things don’t matter. Or satisfy.

As we tackle the book of Jonah, be ready for some uncomfortable moments. Moments of exposure. These are moments that Jonah tended to run away from, usually in the wrong direction, and it never worked out well for him. For us, maybe perhaps we should take a different approach. Perhaps we should pause and listen. Perhaps we should run towards our WHO. Again.

And in so doing, we will find that not only did He never leave but was chasing after us the whole time.