Those Hands

November 1, 2012

Hands are an awesome part of God’s creation, aren’t they?  I fell in love with my husband, partly because of his strong, warm, rugged hands that made me feel safe when they held my hands in his.

Did you know the first mention of this body part is in Genesis 3? God says in verse 22, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.  He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

God had provided the tree of life and complete innocence for his first two human creations, a life of true bliss.  But that wasn’t enough.  They wanted to put their own hand in the mix and muddy the water.

God wanted to be their provider.  He desired to walk with them, daily.  When they reached out their hand to try to gain knowledge that was not theirs to know, their innocence was lost…and their eyes saw their nakedness.

For the first time (after reading this passage many times) I read this verse and cried.  I too have wanted to understand God’s ways and gain knowledge into the whys of good and evil in the world, and to make sense of God’s roamings around the earth.  Why can’t I be allowed to open God’s brain and figure out his ways?

He asks us to be satisfied with the tree of life – from which we can eat all day long.  He asks us to bask in the innocence of walking purely and humbly with him – completely clean and free from the penalty of death.

Yet, we listen to that whisper, we look at what seems to be something God’s keeping from us, and we reach out to grab that which brings us death.  We cannot have one hand reaching out for God’s presence with the other one shaking a fist in his face…and live.  

Thank you God for your mercy on me when my hands let go of yours, in order to reach out and take that which is not mine to have.