Lorrie Spinney

Blog

  • “Lord, if it’s you”

    When Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, after he stops being afraid, his first instinct is to want to do it, too. (Matthew 14:25-31)

    It isn’t, well, that’s Jesus. He’s always doing great things, but you know, he’s Jesus.

    No. It’s, hey Jesus! Can I do that, too?

    And Jesus’ response is immediate, Sure! Come on out.

    Jesus doesn’t give a lesson on the difference between him and ordinary mortals. He doesn’t put Peter in his place – walking on water is for God, you silly.

    No. He says, Come.

    And Peter comes.

    Until he can’t.

    Because he suddenly realizes how impossible it is, and his faith is completely doused.

    But even then, Jesus doesn’t say – Yeah, that’s why humans aren’t supposed to try to do what I do.

    What He says is, “Why did you doubt?” – like Peter should be able to walk on water.

    I’ll say that again:  like Peter should be able to walk on water.

    Like the failure is a flaw in Peter, something wrong – not normal. It isn’t, of course you can’t walk on water.

    It’s, why aren’t you still walking on water?  

    Jesus and Peter have already spent a lot of time together. They live together. They travel together. They hang out all day long.

    And this is the way their relationship goes. Peter thinks he should be able to do what Jesus does, and Jesus thinks so, too.

    You’d almost think Jesus encourages it.

    Like he actually means for us to be like him.

     

     

  • Not okay

    Forgiveness.

    It can feel like another blow, the demand to forgive. Like I’ve been wounded and now I’m supposed to say it’s okay. It’s okay that you did this because I forgive you.

    But it’s not like that.

    When Jesus came helpless and skin-exposed, he never said any of our sin was okay.

    He said He loved us yet. He said He’d take care of the sin, He’d take the bloody consequences of it.

    Forgiveness doesn’t make wrong okay.

    In fact, it’s the opposite.

    Forgiveness leaves the wrong there, all pulsing and ugly, and it says Still, I love you.

    Forgiveness wears the wrong like an ugly gash. It takes the bloody consequences and looks to God.

    Just like Jesus did.

    And God sees.

    God knows whose wrong it is. He doesn’t get mixed up or confused and He certainly doesn’t dismiss it as okay.

    It will never be okay that Jesus suffered, or that we do.

    But when we do it, when we wear the wrong of another and look to God while we bleed, He opens Heaven for us. He helps us bleed it out till it’s gone.

    Just like He did for Jesus.

    And if it feels like he’s abandoned you too, if it feels like this will kill you – let it. Remember what came next: life swooshed in all sparkling new and utterly invincible.

    Maybe that’s the proof of forgiveness – the life of Jesus whooshing in.

    We can’t do it apart from Him. It’s not even possible. Our nature, wired into our bones, is to retaliate somehow, to lash out or withdraw; or give in to despair, decide we deserve it.

    Apart from Jesus we can not forgive.

    But we aren’t apart from Jesus.

    He came helpless, with skin exposed, and wore our wrong like nails right through him.

    He bled it all out till it was gone and so we are forgiven.

    So we can forgive.

  • That other blog

    Years ago.

    Literally. Years ago, I started a second blog called “Dancing in the story”. It was going to be a chummy, chatty sort of guide through the story of the bible which, really, is the story of Life.

    It ended abruptly in December of 2015. There were good reasons, I started a new job for one. The other was that in November of 2015 my 21 year old daughter, suffering depression, overdosed.

    She survived and so did I, but I’ve been a long time coming back to either of these two blogs. I just didn’t have the energy or courage for public writing.

    But recently I read Gretchen Rubin’s “Better than Before”. I created a chart and gave myself a check-mark for every time I added a page to the blog and now at long last I have all of Genesis up. It’s not all published yet, but it’s there and I plan (hope?) to publish a page a day, but not on weekends.

    After that, who knows?

    Join me? Again? Dancing in the Story