Tag: hand

Don’t Let Them Go

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He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn’t stop.

He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.
He wasn’t trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there’ll be so many things
he’ll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.
~Norman MacCaig “Small Boy” from The Poems of Norman MacCaig

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

Some things we pick up
but toss aside like a game.
They hold no meaning
and we want to see how far they go
and how many skips they make.

Some things we pick up
and they are smooth and sparkly,
seeming somehow special;
throwing them back into the abyss
feels like a loss, yet we still let them go.

When there is the one appearing so ordinary,
yet feels just right in our hand,
picked up and pondered,
then placed securely in a pocket,
never to be tossed away.

And so it is,
ordinary as we are,
He never lets us go.
We fit perfectly in His Hand,
safely stowed inside His pocket.

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Dawn on our Darkness: An Abrupt Calling

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Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.
~David Whyte from “TrueLove” in The Sea in You

When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say a “yes” that will change me forever?
~Kathleen Norris from Amazing Grace – A Vocabulary of Faith

Again and again, we are called to do something that takes all our courage – we feel we will sink and drown, perishing in our humiliation, our weakness, our sheer lack of faith in what we are able to accomplish.

Eventually, we tire of the fear of drowning so we just say yes to the invitation to do this hard thing and we take the hand that guides us home.

He calls on us to trust He’ll reach out and hold us up when our faith, and our feet, waver and stumble.

We are not left to drown.

This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”

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Holding Hands

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They disappear with friends
near age 11. We lose them
to baseball and tennis, garage
bands, slumber parties, stages
where they rehearse for the future,
ripen in a tangle of love knots.
With our artificial knees and hips
we move into the back seats
of their lives, obscure as dust
behind our wrinkles, and sigh
as we add the loss of them
to our growing list of the missing.

Sometimes they come back,
carting memories of sugar cookies
and sandy beaches, memories of how
we sided with them in their wars
with parents, sided with them
even as they slid out of our laps
into the arms of others.

Sometimes they come back
and hold onto our hands
as if they were the thin strings
of helium balloons
about to drift off.

~Olivia Stiffler “Grandchildren”, from Otherwise, We Are Safe

Spending a few precious days with a grandchild who lives far away just whets the appetite for wanting more time. These are such short years before they are off to their own lives, leaving their grandparents (and parents) behind.

So when they take my hand, my heart melts, knowing I hold on loosely, knowing I must, someday, somehow, let go.

And before I do, they will come back to hold my hand loosely, knowing they need to let me go.

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Advent Sings: Hidden Power

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

His glory covered the heavens
and his praise filled the earth.

His splendor was like the sunrise;
rays flashed from his hand,
where his power was hidden.
Habakkuk 3 from Habakkuk’s Prayer

His hand
as a tiny newborn gripping his mother’s finger, clasping her mortality
His hand
as a toddler holding his father’s hand, following his every dusty footstep
His hand
as a child throwing and catching, dirty with work and play
His hand
as a teenager learning his craft, sanding and measuring
His hand
as a young man holding God’s Word and learning to keep it deep in his heart
His hand
as a itinerant teacher gesturing and flowing words with movement
His hand
as a healer touching feverish heads, driving out spirits, making the blind to see, raising the lame to walk
His hand
as a servant washing dusty feet, breaking bread, pouring wine, making breakfast
His hand
as a Son gripping tight His Father’s in fervent prayer for relief and release
His hand
as a sacrifice pierced by the nail aimed at us
His hand
as a risen Savior rolling away the stone at sunrise
His hand
as ascended King of Kings, His power no longer hidden.
His hand
holding heavens where flashes His glory upon our faces
Forever and Ever.