Creation Hands

Often I picture

Your hands to be

Shriveled up

Arthritic

Clenched and withholding

Holding on tightly

To all the things I want

But will never receive.

And I believe

You to be stingy

And dried up

Hunched over

Arms crossed

Hoarding wholeness from my presence.

I imagine

Your hands

To be like mine.

Weary and brittle

Inadequate and little.

And so I pray small prayers to match

The god I’ve invented for myself

The god of un-abundance

Who’s more like a reflection of me

Than anything based in reality

A god who cannot carry

Or save

Or rescue.

This is the picture I have of You.

But I look to the sky and realize

When the lights from heaven reach my eyes

The stars they came from

Have been alive

Longer than my mind

Can measure time.

Yet You were there the day they were born

When darkness was torn

With spectacular light

As You separated day from night.

Your works,

Oh Lord

Are very great

And I know

Clenched fists

Cannot create

So I imagine

It was with an open hand

You separated water from land

And built firm foundations

For us to stand.

It takes strong hands to sculpt the mountains

And cut channels for the sea.

Surely these same hands

Are capable to carry me.

The Earth is a speck of dust in a sunbeam

Yet You saw fit to make it teem

With life and color and taste and sound

Your hands, they cause all beauty to abound.

I speak of the things I do not understand

When I question the strength of Your hands

Your deeds they need no explanation

I stand in awe and fascination

When I look at Your creation

All I see

is Your open arms

A God who reaches out to me.

Could a God of withholding

Cause a desert to bloom

Or life to exist inside a womb

Or dead men to come out of their tomb?

The breath in my lungs

Is because You put it there

Who is this God who would care

To give such a blessing?

I spend my time stressing

Obsessing

Over everything I want

But don’t get

Help me to sit

In the reality

Of Your identity

Help me to be

Overwhelmed by Your goodness

To know Your hands in their true light

To see You in the context

Of Your power and Your might.