Lorrie Spinney

Tag: Bible

  • 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.

  • The smallness of me

    “Everyone assembled here will know that the LORD rescues His people, but NOT with sword and spear.” I Sam. 17:47

    No, he uses a shepherd with a sling and a stone.

    Here stands young David, neck bent back to look up at the soldiers, way up at Saul. He wears no armour, carries no sword, no spear. His skin looks like it could snag and tear on a branch. He’s got a few smooth stones and a sling and he’s going to bring down the giant whose mocking laughter scatters warriors.

    And he does.

    And Jonathan and his armour bearer take down a Philistine troop. And Gideon and a few men with clay jars chase off an entire army.

    And Joshua walks around a wall a bunch of times, then shouts. The wall turns to dust and the city is his.

    You do rescue your people, but not with sword and spear. You like to do it unconventionally. You especially like to use small things, weak things, things that shouldn’t work.

    You positively delight in weakness.

    Like you used the broken Israelites, wrecked by abusive slavery, to overthrow the entire Egyptian Empire – just walked them out one night leaving it shattered and wailing.

    Like you used a bloodied, exhausted Jesus … a dead Jesus! … to save the whole entire world: people, animals, and earth itself.

    So, my weakness?  The smallness of me?

    It’s no hindrance to you.

    It’s an opportunity.

  • This Isaac?

    Thousands of years ago a man was told to kill his son.

    And this matters to you and me.

    The man was Abraham and it was God – our God, the same one – who told him to kill his son. That’s why it matters.

    The son was Isaac, and most of us know the story. We know that Isaac was a miracle child. God had promised him to Abraham and Sarah and then waited over twenty years – twenty years! – to deliver on the promise.

    And Sarah was already old when the twenty years started.

    By the time Isaac was born she was long past fertile. She was long done. As the bible so succinctly puts it, “her womb was dead.”

    But that’s no problem for God. In another bible story, He started with a walking stick: Aaron’s staff. It was long gone from the tree yet God grew buds, then flowers, then almonds from that dead stick.

    In the same way He grew Isaac from Sarah’s dead womb.

    And there was more. Isaac was not only promised, but he was a promise. God had promised Abraham that through Isaac, Abraham would be given a multitude of descendants.

    The story almost loses me here because I don’t get what is so great about a multitude of descendants.

    But I think it’s a bit like if God said to us, “Your life matters. It is so important to what I am doing in the world that generations upon generations of people will know you and know that through you they are blessed.”

    Anyway, that’s what Isaac meant to Abraham and – so Abraham thought – to God.

    Then God told him to kill Isaac.

    Can you imagine?

    Honestly, it would seem as though God had come unhinged.

    “This Isaac? God, you want me to kill this Isaac? The one you grew from death? The one you promised so much about?”

    And, in a smaller voice, “The one I love so much?”

    But Abraham does it.

    He does it!

    How?

    By faith.

    Faith? In God? The God who has completely reneged on everything He said? The God who has become so strangely, unrecognizably, horrible?

    But you see that’s what faith is.

    It’s not just believing that God exists. It’s believing that He’s good.

    I’m going to say that again: faith doesn’t just believe that God exists. It believes that He’s good.

    Sometimes, He really doesn’t seem so. It’s almost as though He tries to be difficult.

    I think He does.

    It’s like muscle-building for our faith.

    So, when God seems not good to us, even … horrible, then let’s turn our faces toward Him and walk. Let’s obey though it cost our dearest treasure. Let’s believe, against all the evidence and against all reason, that He is good.

    Let’s muscle up our faith.

    Oh, did I forget to mention?

    In the end, God didn’t let Abraham kill Isaac.

    He’s not actually like that.