Lorrie Spinney

Tag: weakness

  • Unfixed Wounds

    Some wounds heal completely. It takes a while, but eventually they are gone: no scars.

    Others don’t.

    Instead, we learn how to live with them. We cover scars with makeup or clothing, or we wear them dismissively. We learn to walk with a limp, or bent, or maybe we go on wheels. But we go.

    And sometimes God does wonderful healings, miraculous healings. And sometimes he doesn’t.

    And I am thinking that all this is true of mental and emotional wounds just as much as of physical ones.

    My dad drank, making life sometimes chaotic and scary.  I learned that the world is not a safe place. He touched me sexually and I learned that I was, in some essential way, bad.

    Fear and guilt: two wounds that happened early and went deep.

    I still have them, and I am over 50 years old. God has not taken them away though I have wanted him to. I would love to not so easily, or often, fall into those feelings. A good Christian shouldn’t.

    But maybe that’s wrong thinking.

    Every time I feel guilt, it is an invitation to wash in forgiveness. Maybe the guilt is earned, or maybe it’s the hurt of the old wound, but so what? I get me to the cross and I stay there a while, letting what Jesus did – be for me.

    And fear, well, it’s the prerequisite for courage. If I feel fear a hundred times a day, then a hundred times a day I get to be brave. That’s a lot of bravery training.

    Guilt teaches me forgiveness and fear teaches me courage, like a mountain in my way teaches me to climb.

    Like God left enemies in Canaan “only to teach warfare” to the Isrealites who needed it (Judges 3:2).

    Maybe God leaves some wounds unfixed so that He can keep giving us fresh grace. Maybe we need to stop resisting and instead climb, letting our need drive us up the next step.

    Over and over and over.

    Since my weakness is the soil in which God’s strength grows, why would he take it away? Does a farmer take the dirt off a field?

  • 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.