There are a few things we do every year with the start of Advent...no matter how busy we are. The tree goes up, the Nativity is set out, and the Advent wreath and candles are placed.
This year we added a sofa table to our living room decor, and that is where we put the Nativity. Right there in the middle of our living space. Isn't that where Jesus belongs? In the middle of life?
Unfortunately, right in the middle of our living space, life gets messy and broken. See, we have cats...and cats play and fight and chase and run. Inevitably ...there were casualties. Over the course of the last 4 weeks of advent, one wise man was decapitated. Another wiseman lost his hand and his gift. Joseph sacrificed his fingers causing him to randomly drop his staff. Mary lost one of her hands, but Jesus...Baby Jesus lost both of his...
So I have spent the last few weeks thinking about Jesus's hands....
I can't help but think about those tiny baby hands reaching up and touching his mother's face as he nursed.
Or how he may have gestured as he taught the teachers at the temple in Luke 2.
I wonder if John the Baptist grabbed his hand to help him into the water to be baptized.
I thought of all the people he healed. So many times the Word says he was moved with compassion, and, then, he reached out and touched them.
What about when Peter saw him walking on the water and asked to go to him. How Peter got out of the boat and walked to Jesus, but as he did he saw the wind and the waves and began to fall into the water. Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and rescued him. Matthew 14
How in Luke 18 people were bringing their babies to him so he could touch them and bless them. The disciples tried to stop him, but Jesus wouldn't let them. He wanted to bless those babies.
How in Luke 8 a woman that had been bleeding for 12 years touched him and was made whole. Then, later that same day, He reached out his hand and a little girl was brought back from the dead.
How his hands broke the bread with his disciples on the night that he was betrayed. How those hands sealed a New Covenant as he prepared to fulfill the Old. How he prayed in the Garden later that night and took his hand and healed the severed ear of the guard that was there to arrest him. Luke 22
How those hand were nailed to a cross for the punishment of MY sin...not his sin...because he had no sin...
What about when three days later those hands came back to life. And he showed himself to Mary and all of the disciples except Thomas. But soon after, Thomas took those hands in his own, placed his fingers into the scars left in them from the nails, and believed that Jesus was truly alive again. John 20
And He is...Alive Again!!!
See the Baby Jesus in my Nativity set has hands that are broken, but the Jesus in my heart, his hands are mighty! They save. They rescue. They heal. The very best place for Jesus really is in the middle of my biggest messes!
The Lord's hand is not to short to save. Isaiah 59:1
Merry Christmas!
The Savior is born!
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