Thank goodness, in the social climate we live in today!
DHB.com: With the breakdown of civility in society—in our homes, in our nation, and in the world, I’m reposting a Christmas meditation I wrote a number of years ago. Blessings!
The elementary school I attended held a cake sale every year at Christmas. In second grade, the teacher led our class outside for recess, single file, past rows of cakes lined up in the hallway. The sizes and shapes, the designs and icings mesmerized me. I ran my hand with fingers spread a few inches above the sugar-coated slabs when the dastardly law of gravity kicked in. My hand free fell onto a chocolate cake, causing sticky icing to erupt between my fingers. I jerked my hand away, but to my horror, a perfect impression remained.
Fears of a trip to the principal’s office and a spanking from my parents replaced visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. Well, I did what a boy had to do. I licked all traces of evidence from my fingers as the line continued through the hallway. Fortunately, we were long gone before any crime scene investigation commenced.
Touch Me Not
Admit it. History gives hands a bad rap and not only because of little boys like me. Eve picked the forbidden fruit, Cain slew Abel, and on and on and on. Just motion your hands in a foreign culture and see what reactions you get. Yes, Billy Joel, we didn’t start the fire, but we certainly do a good job adding sticks to it.
We are a cynical species for good reason. No wonder the words untouched by human hands or hermetically sealed on food packaging and medicine bring a sense of assurance. Even a manufacturer’s quality control needs backing up by a warranty card for the gadgets someone’s hands assembled and end up under our Christmas tree.
Peer Inside
How did we arrive with such a jaded outlook? Our hands are an extension of our minds and wills—minds and wills left largely unchecked by any moral authority. Peer inside the titanium casing of our technological Eden and we see that the 21st Century is well on its way to being just as bloody, greedy, and exhausting as the previous one.
Despite our human propensity to screw things up, the God of the universe made himself vulnerable when he came to earth. He came to free humanity from its quagmire of sin, but not the way one would expect. He came as a baby.
Make no mistake, Jesus had to be touched. When the innkeeper’s wife, a midwife, or perhaps Joseph with his calloused carpenter hands, reached to guide the Christ-child’s passage into this world, no gift tag read, “do not touch.” When He became a man, no other-worldly protective seal surrounded Him.
No, God is the God who allowed Himself to be touched and handled by human hands.
Jesus. Caressed by a mother and slapped by soldiers. Passed among the hands of women, pushed, and shoved by an encirclement of the same soldiers. Wiped and bathed as an infant, spit upon as a man. Held up by a feeble priest—dragged before an insecure governor. Praised by a prophetess, ridiculed by his own brothers.
He played the rough and tumble games of boys, and nearly shoved off a cliff by an offended crowd. His cloak touched from behind by a bleeding woman, his person snuggled up to by children. Wept upon by a prostitute and kissed on the feet—betrayed by a friend with a kiss on the cheek. Clothed with simple rags by a loving mother’s hands, stripped and nailed to a cross by our own hands.
God is the God who allowed Himself to be touched and handled by human hands—whether loving or unloving. So, fear not. Come! He won’t hold up His hand and say, “You, stay behind the yellow line.”
Yes, come—sticky hands and all
