Reaching Out

Sitting beside the deathbed, I noticed that the last efforts of the woman were to reach out her hand. 

Was she reaching for water? prayer beads? a photograph? 

Her reach was unwearying. I took her hand. She squeezed mine and then was able to rest.

It reminded me of my children when they were small. Darkness made them reach their tiny hands between the bars of the crib. They never tired of reaching until their hand could hold mine. They wanted to be reassured that comfort and safety were more real than darkness, fear, or death. 

Isaiah wrote, “Comfort, comfort my people,” but in the same chapter, he said, “Even youths shall faint and be weary…”

Even young men fall exhausted, but the hands of infants and dying people never weary. The truth is, we are all reaching out unceasingly for comfort.

The Psalmist wrote, “In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord; in the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted.”

We don’t weary of reaching out our hands.

The Good News is that Jesus became a man, “taking the very form of a servant,” He dwelt among us, and He had hands like ours, and yet so unlike ours.  

He reached out and touched the leper. He touched the hand of Peter’s sick mother-in-law. He took the hand of a dead little girl in His own. He blessed the little children with His hands. When Peter was sinking beneath the waves, Jesus immediately reached out His hand and took hold of him. 

They weren’t only comforted. They were healed, raised, blessed, and saved. 

When they reached out their desperate hands to Jesus, He clasped them with His own capable, life-giving hands. 

With His hands, Jesus dipped bread into the same dish as His betrayer. He was forced to hold a reed, that mock scepter that had nothing in common with His real power and authority. His hands were pierced, bleeding, and stretched out on the cross, that instrument of torture that was also an insult and a curse. 

Jesus knew what it felt like to reach out His hands for comfort. His focus was on the Father, whose hands were trustworthy, even in that moment of excruciating suffering: “Father, into Your hands, I commit My spirit.”

He died, and His hands were folded over His breast as He was buried in the tomb. Lifeless, impotent, frail, it seemed that they would no longer comfort nor seek comfort. 

But, you know that those very same hands were all the proof that was needed to show God’s glory in raising Him from the dead. He showed them His hands. He lifted  those nail-scarred hands and blessed them. 

John looked at those hands and wrote, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” 

Jesus Himself said, “I give [my sheep] eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.”

That’s what we’ve been reaching for all along.