Lorrie Spinney

Blog

  • Ready yet?

    It’s Christmas Eve and I’m thinking about a horde of slaves scrambling to get away from Egypt, and camped at the base of a mountain in the desert of Sinai. I’m thinking about how they’ve just watched God supernaturally set them free from the world’s most powerful empire; and how he’s promised them a wonderful land of their own, a land so rich it grows abundant crops seemingly all by itself.

    That’s where they’re headed. That’s the goal. Egypt is broken behind them and the Promised Land beckons.

    But God has stopped them here, in the desert, and they’ve been here for months already.

    God wants them to build a special tent, a Tabernacle. It’s going to be God’s house. He’s going to live with them.

    Which is a very big deal.

    What they know for sure about God is that anyone who sees him dies. And now he wants to move in and live right among them, in a tent just like theirs – well, sort of.

    Really the tent is pretty special. Chapters and chapters of the Story are given to its description, and months and months of work are spent building it and all its furnishings.

    It takes a full year to get it ready.

    They arrived at Sinai two months after leaving Egypt; two months after the night Egypt screamed while all its firstborn sons were killed by the angel of death; two months after the Egyptians open their doors and shooed out their slaves, panicked at what was happening; two months after Pharaoh changed his mind and gathered what was left of his army and went after them again, enraged at what they had cost him.

    In two months they arrive at Sinai, with the Promised Land only days away.

    But God stops them here for a full year to build the Tabernacle.

    Like the Tabernacle matters more than getting to the Promised Land.

    Like God is more interested in living with them, than in bringing them anywhere.

    Like being with them is the main thing.

    Almost as though He really, really, loves them.

    Like if he could just put on skin and be with them that way, He would.

    But I guess they’re not ready for that yet.

  • He still learns

    He started out as a baby

    without self-awareness –

    the great I AM –

    and needing to put the pieces together

    as he grew, to figure out his purpose

    and learn about his Father.

     

    He needed to learn a skill and trade

    and work in the context of difficult

    family relationships.

    He began each day with no awareness

    of what that day would bring, or where

    it would take him.

     

    He needed to learn how to surrender

    his human will to the will of God

    and then

    how to keep doing it day after day

    in the context of an ordinary life –

    a tradesman in a nowhere town

    among a people beaten down.

     

    He needed to learn

    to see God

    with human eyes

    and live for God, with God

    in a human life.

     

    The Jesus we saw at the end –

    his few short years of publicity

    and long hours of pain on a cross

    was the final result – He learned

    how to live God’s life

    as a human.

     

    Which is what we need to learn,

    and at Christmas, when we try to remember

    a long ago event in a faraway place

    and to somehow piece it together with our

    ordinary lives – so that it has the meaning

    we know it should have –

     

    We can remind ourselves

    that he learned, and he knows

    how to learn

    and how to teach us,

    and that though for us it is long ago

    and far away

    it is not for him.

     

    To God, whose mind

    is never dimmed by time,

    the experience of being human

    is fresh and vivid and utterly now.

     

    He is still learning

    as a master learns,

    for and with each one of us

    how to live his life

    in ours.

  • Oh no, another blog

    Okay.

    I’m doing this.

    I’m telling you, my faithful readers, about a new blog that I have just started.

    Well, it’s in the form of a blog, but really, I’m rolling out a book that I’ve been working at for years.

    I need feedback.

    The book is a kind of running commentary on the story of the bible. It’s purpose is to give company and help to people who want to read the whole bible but find it intimidating or off-putting for whatever reason.

    I don’t think it needs to be intimidating or off-putting for any reason – at least, not if a person wants to read it.

    So I act as a kind of tour guide. I tell you what to read in your bible, and then point out things of interest and highlight what matters to the story as a whole.

    It’s by no means comprehensive and I don’t pretend to be a scholar.

    I am an enthusiast.

    I think that for some people, an enthusiast has a better chance of carrying them along than a scholar would. It’s for them that I write.

    I’m asking you to go visit the site and if you know someone who you think would enjoy it – share the link with them.

    Here’s the link: Dancing in the Story

    Thanks.