Last weekend my friend Abdul came to church with us for the first time. Being one of his first times in a non-muslim worship setting, he was taking everything in and loving every minute of it. The music, the message, the friendly people. And then he said something to me that I didn’t understand at first, and not just because of his broken English. “I like your dancing.”
This was funny for two reasons. First, because there was no dancing going on in the service. Second, because if I HAD been dancing, he, or anyone else for that matter, would NOT have liked it. 🙂
Then I realized what he meant. My hands. When I sing, as when I talk, my hands have a language of their own. And when my arms were raised in worship and my hands were doing their thing up there in the sky, he thought it looked like dancing.
I couldn’t help but smile. Dancing hands. I like it.
The other night at dinner, my husband Mark was telling a story that he was excited about, his hands flying around like caged birds longing to be free. Passionate about his subject of conversation. Abby and I joked that none of us could complete a full sentence with our hands tied behind our backs. It’s how we communicate in our family.
As my friend Laurie put it the other day,”Our hands are a reflection of our soul, they show our emotions and emphasize our words and feelings.” Well said, Laurie. I couldn’t agree more.
On my walk this morning, I noticed someone else’s dancing hands. God’s. Creation the greatest physical evidence of His dancing hands.
As Laurie said, creation “emphasizes (His) words”. He wasn’t content with just telling us He loved us. He SHOWED us. He expressed His love to us through thousands of different shaped and colored flowers, each with their own unique fragrance. Trees offering shade and beauty to our landscapes. Rolling hills, chirping birds, fluffy clouds. All for our pleasure and His glory. I can only imagine His hands at work painting, molding, whittling, crafting each intricate piece of nature.
But creation was only the beginning of the dance of His hands. His love would require more than just beauty extended to us. His hands would end up expressing His love in a much greater way.
Those dancing hands that created and healed and touched and comforted would carry a huge cross uphill, bloodied, blistered and splintered. They would be stretched across that wooden crossbar and ultimately stilled by spikes that would violently tear into their flesh. And with a last tortured breath, those hands would go limp and lifeless.
The enemy no doubt laughed that day, sure that he had stopped God’s dancing hands forever. Sure that death was the end.
What he didn’t realize was that in the silence of three days in a grave, God was very much alive, preparing for the greatest dance of all. A resurrection where the only sign of death would be in the scars on those eternally dancing hands. Hands that now and forevermore offer life and love like nothing else.
Let’s go into this day thankful for those Hands of love and life and watching for signs of dancing in and all around us. Because His hands are ALWAYS at work, ALWAYS moving, ALWAYS dancing. Just you watch…
Ephesians 2:10 – For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Psalm 19:1 – The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Isaiah 64:8 – Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
