In Good Hands

You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem held by your God. (Is. 62:3).

I grew up with really old grandparents. My Mom's parents were 15 years apart in age, and my grandfather was already 74 years old when I was born. They both lived well into their 90s and lived only a mile away from us, so I had the blessing of spending a lot of time with them. By the time they passed into eternity, I was well into adulthood with a plethora of incredible memories of these two unique and amazing people.

My grandmother was a concert pianist as a young woman. Even in her old age, she still practiced 2 or 3 hours a day. I can remember sitting in her parlor for hours listening to her play. I was absolutely mesmerized at the heavenly sounds that rang out through the house whenever her hands touched the keyboard. At the age of 4, I began taking piano lessons and I wanted to be just like my grandmother. In high school, I became the accompanist for the choir during my sophomore, junior and senior years. I was always nervous about playing in front of people, but knowing that my grandmother was in the audience during our concerts always made me feel confident and secure. It was as though she was sitting next to me on the bench playing the music alongside me with those amazing hands of hers. She passed away in 1991, but to this day, whenever I play or sing at church, I sense her there with me.

My grandfather, whom my siblings and I lovingly called "Tatón," had a carpenter shop in the back yard and he spent hours there building things or fixing household items that had broken. He hand built all of the wood paneling and moldings in their house. He had an aversion to most power tools and often declared that those who relied on such fancy machinery could hardly be thought of as “master” carpenters. He was also an avid gardener who loved being outside with a rake in his hand. For a man of small stature (he was only 4’ 10”), he had the most powerful hands of anyone I knew. He could take a chunk of wood or metal and turn it into just about anything.

When I was little, I had no qualms about asking my grandfather to build things for me, and he was always happy to do so. I still have the stable that he built for my Nativity set when I was about 8 years old. I didn’t have the strength or capacity to make it myself, but I knew that my grandfather could. We spent a whole day in his carpenter shop. When it was complete, we took it into the house to show my grandmother, and Tatón proudly announced that we had built it. We. My grandfather, out of his love for me, let me enter into his giftedness.

Our God is like that. We can do incredible things with and through Him. Our true glory is found in His glory. As St. Paul says, we are truly strong in our weakness (cf. 2 Cor. 12:10). Real strength is that which we find in God, and only when we humbly acknowledge who and what we are, or perhaps more importantly, who and what we are not. Early this morning, I read an essay about an elderly couple. The wife was dying and her son-in-law, the author of the piece, was making some observations about how his father-in-law, in particular, epitomized the commitment to marriage “for better or for worse.” I was struck by one line in the essay that declared that we "will only begin really to live when we have lost all capacity to pretend that we are our own.”

St. Paul reminds us that the life [we] live is not [our] own (Gal. 2:20). The only life that’s worth living is that which we find in God. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand (Jer. 18:6), the Lord tells us. Life in Christ is a paradox. The Beatitudes, for example, extol the virtues of those who are typically viewed disparagingly by society: the poor, the meek, the persecuted. We try to avoid dying at all costs, both physical death and the necessary spiritual death of metanoia. And yet, it is precisely through this ongoing, daily conversion that we enter into God's giftedness. When we give Him permission to mold us according to His plan, we discover our true selves in the process. We're in good hands!

Prayer Request: For those for whom life feels like a constant swim against the current.

Prayer: Gracious God, we thank you for your great love and gentle care for us. May our lives be a witness of that love to those who struggle to make sense of life, that they might understand that they are not alone, and that You are upholding them with Your mighty hand. We make this prayer through Christ, our Lord. Amen.