Hand-Crafted

Psalm 134:1 A Song of Ascents. Behold, bless the Lord, All you servants of the Lord, Who by night stand in the house of the Lord! 2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the Lord. 3 The Lord who made heaven and earth Bless you from Zion!

When we have made something, we like to deservedly take pride in what we have done.

It starts at a very early age. “Look at me daddy!” is one of the earliest sentences we learn to form with our mouths. While putting words together to form a complete thought is an impressive feat in itself, we really want the focus to be on what we have done.

A paper hat? A crayon-colored pony? “Just looky!”

There is definitely something revelatory about human nature involved in all of this. Our desire - innate or otherwise - to be creative. Our desire to create something valuable. Our desire to be NOTICED for what we have wrought with our hands.

Have you ever studied your hands to see what marvelous tools you are employing to create whatever it is you are creating? I’m not talking about the mechanical pencil, or the exacto-knife, or the wonderfully-sharp scissors you are holding – I’m talking about the handy items on the ends of your arms. (Your hands themselves.)

What a marvelous creation they are, with opposable thumbs and all. We can reach out and grab just about anything we can lift that isn’t too hot or too cold. We can draw. We can cut. We can knead. We can paste. We can sculpt.

And when we have finished, we get to the good part. “Look at me, daddy!”

Sadly, some go all their lives without any sort of appreciative acknowledgment from their earthly fathers, or mothers either for that matter. (Though this problem seems more likely to be said of fathers.) I just want my father to see what I have done, and to see that I am a good son. That I am capable of being worthy of my dad’s love.

Somewhere along the way it occurs to each of us to look down at our hands. As time goes by this gets more and more interesting. Every day, I see more of my father’s hands by appearance at the end of my arms. I see the aging process played out, as the skin gets thin and wrinkly, and the veins begin to bulge out on the back of them. “There’s my dad. These hands look exactly like my father’s hands looked.” And then it occurs to me that it is not so important what I can do with these hands, but that these hands reveal whose son I am. Now I know why my dad smiled so much whenever I completed a project.

-  Pastor Bill