Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch and in today's episode, we're asking the question, is joy the medicine you need? This is prompted by a fascinating article I read recently in the Washington Post about a hobby that dramatically reduces the risk of dementia. So just think about this. There is a hobby, an activity that you can participate in, that will reduce your risk of dementia by 76%. 76%. I mean, that is an incredible reduction in risk of dementia. Do you know what that hobby is? What. What do you think it is? Well, you're never gonna guess, because the answer is it's dancing. Dancing reduces the risk of dementia by 76%. Older adults who dance more than once a week have a dramatically lower risk of dementia compared to people who do not dance at all. Now, you might be thinking, well, hold on, Zach, is it just physical activity like dancing is one way, but it could be. No, actually, they studied that one. Walking and swimming, for example, are helpful, but not nearly as helpful as dancing. Dancing, by far, is the best thing that older adults can do to limit the risk of dementia. In fact, a, 2020 study showed that social dancing among older adults doesn't just decrease your risk of dementia, it actually decreases the risk of falling by 37%. So if you're an older adult and. And you dance twice a week, you are less likely to get dementia. You're less likely to have a fall that harms you. I find this so interesting, really for two reasons. One is, my wife's always trying to get me to dance, and I won't do it. And I'm still not willing maybe to rethink that, but maybe I should be. But the second reason is because I actually think that what we're tapping into here is something even bigger than dancing or dementia or falling or physical effects. I think part of what's happening here is that we are hardwired for joy there. There's no such thing as sad dancing. It's just not an activity that you do unless it is a response, A, joyful response to music or to a celebration or to romance. I mean, think about the environments in which people dance. A romantic dinner, a wedding. They're going to. To have a night out. These are joyful things. I can walk and be in a bad mood. I can swim and just want to get through it to get my exercise in. But if you're dancing, you're feeling good. And feeling good might just be the medicine we need to cure some of our problems. I couldn't help when I read this story to have some echo of Eden in my head. You remember when God makes everything and he, he puts Adam and Eve in the garden and they have each other, and God looks over everything that he's made. Genesis 1:31, and it says, God saw all that he made, and it was very good. You know, we're wired to live in a good world. We're wired to enjoy the goodness around us. We were meant to live lives of consistent, daily and eternal joy. Of course, sin has perverted that world. And one of its chief perversions is it robs us of the joy we were meant to experience. So that I was made to dance. But. But I don't feel like dancing. I don't feel like dancing because of stress. I don't feel like dancing because of the way you would laugh at me. There's a million reasons I don't feel like dancing. But all of those reasons are reduced down to a broken world. What I think this study is showing us is that we need to break out of the brokenness of our world. We need to find opportunities to grab hold of joy. We need to start dancing. And of course, in the church, one of the motivations, one of the inspirations for joy and even at times the response of dancing is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because the message that God loves us, that he loved us even when we were at our lowest, that he sent His Son to rescue us in our lowest moment, that our future is destiny, is a return to daily, consistent, eternal joy should elicit, from us joy. And it should lead us even to spontaneous, exciting moments of, yes, dancing. And the byproduct of that wouldn't just be increased affection for God or even increased understanding of what we have in Christ. The ancillary benefits of that is maybe we'd be a little healthier too. Like, I guess what I'm saying is this. If you're feeling a little worn down, if you're feeling a little broken down, if you're anxious about how your mind and body may wear down in the future, fight to return to joy. And if that joy even prompts you to dance, lean into it. Because after all, it's good for you. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content, or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!