Open hands
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17
Imagine a child who is starving hurling their morning bowl of cereal on the floor because they want a pizza.
Or imagine refusing to answer the door to your best friend because someone else didn’t invite you to a party.
Imagine life with closed hands.
We can all do this with God, to be so fixed on the one thing that we wanted, that we close our hands to him and refuse all the other good gifts that God is offering – even the love that is always held out with nail-pierced hands.
It may be that the thing we wanted is a good thing, not just pizza or a party but truly a deep long-cherished desire of our hearts and we cannot just dismiss it and glibly grab hold of the other good things in our life. Maybe as for me, it is a person we have lost. Maybe it is a shattered dream or a broken marriage or a longed-for relationship or the lost hope of having a baby. Maybe it is ongoing disappointments. What do we do with this promise that God offers good and perfect gifts when it seems that he has withheld or even removed the gift that we longed for?
God offers another gift, the gift of being comforted. It is when we bring the loss to God with open hands, trusting him with it, allowing ourselves to grieve it, taking time to consciously place our hope in God, that he can meet us in our pain and even turn it to good.
Grieving is rightly described as work – it can be an effort because not all the time, but at least some time, we have to give space to feel the pain. For me, that has involved many tears, sometimes wrestling with myself and with God. But I found that given time, God untangles it all. And the light shines in the darkness.
The place of healing is in bringing our deepest loss, that thing that we so wanted that is lost to us, to God – to trust him with it. God receives that as a great gift from us.
Coming to God with open hands with all our losses releases us to receive again with open hands all that he wants to give to us – other joys that come unexpected and undeserved.
Life with open hands is life as God intended. It is a life of receiving and giving because every good gift comes from God not just to grab onto but to share. Deep joy has a cost but it is worth it.
With thanks to Kate Remmer for the picture of the bread and to Diego PH for the hands holding the lights on Unsplash
