Hands.
Complex, yet delicate machinery, full of God's fingerprints. So often taken for granted, people don't stop to look closely.
What if we follow our Savior's hands?
At the beginning of time, His fingers painted the skies with clouds and rainbows. Mountains and rivers He carefully created. Molding man into His own likeness with the palm of His hands.
Cupping His hand, He guided Noah through the waves, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph through the beginnings and hardships of raising families. Moses in the wilderness, the Israelites going into captivity for their ignorance of the One who held them close through everything. Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Micah as they spoke His word to the nations who hated them.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, picked by His hand to raise the Son of God. As a baby, His little fingers curled around His mother's. His father showed Him how to shape wood with His young hands.
Baptized by cousin John, water trickled between the fingers. This same hand beckoned Peter and James, John and Andrew, Phillip and Matthew. These hands stretched out over the sea to calm the waves.
The gentle hand that helped the paralyzed man to stand. The hand that held the scroll of Isaiah while He preached. The hands that raised the dead. Healed the sick. Blessed children. The hand that clapped a disciple on the back.
Hands innocently empty of sins or weapons. They were in chains. Flogged. The hands driven through with the nails of our sins and secret shame, our pain and fear.
These hands now reach out to you, scars and all, inviting your own hands into His. His work hardened, dirt under nails, sacrificial hands tell a story. A true one. Of love.
Writing is a generational blessing in my family. My mother, and English teacher, thought about writing a book, but never did. She was stellar at research, and followed the family tree back to the Revolutionary War. Outside of school, my writing consisted of journaling to express a range of emotions safely. That is, until God nudged me into taking writing seriously. My daughter also wrote poems, songs and prose in her younger years and has a gift for expressing herself. So it's no surprise to have at least one grandchild that excells a this as well.
When I first read Sophia's piece called Hands, I knew it needed to be read by a wider audience. This young writer is only beginning.
