Jumping Jesus

As you might recall, I was whining a while ago about being funnier and more interesting on other people's blogs. Well here it happens again. :-0

Matt over at The Church of No People did a post yesterday about the poem Footprints. You know the one I mean. When I was young, I thought that to be a real Christian, you needed to memorise the whole Bible, be able to pray in tongues, and have at least one copy of Footprints stuck to your wall in each room. On the off chance that you have never actually met a Christian in your entire life, and thus do not know what I am talking about, click on the image and enlarge the poem.

Beautiful, ain't it?

But I digress. Matt posted an awesome post about how we sometimes see Jesus wrong because of this poem. I agreed, but what blew me away, was the comment by Jane D, she suggests that Jesus's response to the accusation about why there was only one set of footprints was "Because that's when we were hopping!"

How. Awesome. Is. That.????

I suggest you go and read all the comments, as there are some intersting and touching insights there. The simple comment about hopping, which gave me much laughter, also gave me pause for thought. It actually was a lot more profound than I gave it credit for.

So here was my response.

As humorous as Jane D's answer was, and it had me laughing out loud for a while, I think I like it the most. The idea that Jesus doesn't pick us up, but he says "Your leg doesn't work, that's fine. I've got a strong leg. Lean on me and we'll hop for a while. No, I'm not going to carry you, where's the fun in that? You can borrow my strength for a while. Okay, you lead the way. Of course I know how to hop, see, I can lift my leg as well. Anything you have to do, I did first. So I know how to hop. "Or maybe it's just the image of Jesus lifting up his white robes (not besmirched with damp sand of course) and hopping on an imaginary hopscotch court.Sorry if I made a perfectly humorous comment a little too serious.

I think for me there is some merit in that comment. Jesus doesn't carry us, he walks with us, and lets us rest our weight on him. If he didn't already know how to hop, how to walk with one bad leg, he would never be able to help us to do the same thing. Isn't it awesome that our GOD can hop with us?

I know a jumping Jesus, do you?