Do you remember the Ivory Liquid commercials from years ago? They promised if you used Ivory Liquid, your hands would look young no matter what your age. Those promises may have sold dish soap, but in reality I have found hands to be revealingly honest.

I may be able cheat the calendar a little by using creams and lotions on my face. But when I look at my hands, I see the hands of a woman who has lived the spring and summer of her life. These hands tell of an unsheltered life. A life spent training horses, hauling hay, pulling weeds, washing dishes and diapers and scrubbing floors. They are my mother’s hands, and her mother’s before her.

With bittersweet fondness I remember my Grandfather Hendricks’s hands. They were wonderfully large, bent, work-gnarled hands. How I loved those hands! And although he has been with Jesus for over thirty years, I can still see them; still feel them as they swallowed my own in their loving grasp.

Years ago my aunt turned on the evening news in the middle of a story about shoeing horses. The television didn’t show the face of the man doing the demonstration, only his hands holding the horse’s hoof on his knees. “That’s my little brother!” she exclaimed. “I’d know those hands anywhere.” And sure enough, it was my dad.

Oh yes, hands tell a story, don’t they? Are they soft and smooth, or are they hard and calloused? Are they tender or are they harsh? In the book of the Revelation we read that Jesus laid his hand on John and said, “Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last…I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore…”

“Do not be afraid.”

King David said it this way, “When I am afraid, I will trust in You.” Those precious hands of my Savior bear the scars he earned while purchasing my salvation. Someday I’ll touch them. Today I’ll rest in them, trusting they will never let me go or let me down.

And He took them up in His arms, laid His Hands on them, and blessed them.  Mark 10:16

© Sharon Coleman 2013