Let Your Hands Be Strong

Merely months before my father died from cancer, he had a visit from his sister, Mary Ann.  Mary Ann is a former nun, deeply spiritual, musical. and despite the many health and financial struggles her life has handed her, joyful.  Her laugh ,a mix between a cackle, a bark and a song, will make you cringe and join her laughing, at the same time.   Mary  Ann is younger by a decade than Dad.

These siblings talked for hours and Dad would perk up when she came into the room.  You knew from their conversations that these two were bonded by many shared experiences.   Dad was seventy-five, struggled to leave his chair, spent much of his time quietly sitting.  He watched the clock, pointing out when four hours had passed and he could take his next pain pill.   A rancher who could carry a hundred pound calf as far as was needed on his shoulders, a father and grandfather to many, reduced.   A man whose gruff voice could send people scurrying, quieted.  Mary Ann spoke to him like she spoke to the man of forty, or thirty, that she had known.  That is the person she saw in the chair.

Towards the end of the visit, Dad spread his hands out before him and looked at them.   He turned them up and over and side to side.  He splayed his fingers, he put his hands together in prayer.   He cleared his throat, he began to speak.  His words went something like this.

“These used to be such strong hands.   Now they’re so weak.  So old, so tired.   I couldn’t fix a barbed wire fence with them anymore.”

Mary Ann slipped down from her chair to the floor by him.

Dad looked at her, intently, eye to eye.  Then back to his hands.  His voice quavered.  “Did I do more harm than good with these hands?  I was rough and mean; I hit people.  I built things.   I held babies and caressed children.  But in the end, did I do more good than harm?  I don’t know.”

Mary Ann was on her knees now, holding her brother’s hands.   “Oh yes, Ed.  Such wonderful hands; so much kindness, so much good.  Strong father, giving children the gift of faith.  Strong husband.”  Her voice went  low. I could not hear from across the room - only snippets.  “Remember…”  “You helped…”

I didn’t need to hear the exact words.   They were close to each other, leaning in and on each other.  He was crying.  She was crying.  He, listening.  She, consoling.

It was only moments.  Mary Ann’s last words were, “Good hands.  Strong hands.”  In that short conversation, she and he had discussed whether or not Dad had lived as good a life as he might have.
It put a thought in my heart.  From time to time, I look down at my hands.  “More good than harm?”   “Strong hands?”  “Kind hands?”

Jewel’s song Hands resonates with me – especially this morning.   “My hands are small, I know.  They mine and not your own.  And I am never broken.”

The bible has much to say about hands.   There is the raising of hands to win battles, the raising of hands in prayer, praise and celebration.  There is the laying on of hands for healing; exhortations that lazy hands make a man poor.  There is the importance of the right hand – what you hold in it and who is at your right hand.  There is guidance by hands.  Jesus restores a shriveled hand, stretched out to him.  Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“I hold you in the palm of My hand.”

“I will save you and you will be a blessing.  Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong.”  Zechariah 8:19.

“My times are in your hands.” Ps. 31:15

“Do not let your hands hang limp.”

Our hands are ours – and they work good and bad in our lives.   They caress or slap.  They can fix or break.  As Jewel points out, our hands are our own, and they do the work we would have them do – not the work of others.    We have a choice, in any moment of our lives, to let our hands be strong.   And kind.  Or otherwise.   We can let our hands hang limp and useless by our side – saying we don’t have the strength or it is not our problem or just choosing to do nothing.    We can clench, open, splay, grasp, let go.

How would my life and yours differ if we looked at our hands in critical moments?  Once a week?  Whenever?  What matter of evil would we prevent?  How much kindness would the day show?  Would we do small acts of kindness  - hold a door open for someone maybe?   Type a quick text to someone we haven’t touched based with in a while?  Fold them in prayer for our children?
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“My hands are small I know, but they’re not yours, they are my own.  And I am never broken.”

Updated May 2019.