The Re-membering Hands of God
The first time Drew and I held hands, I experienced two things at once: exhilaration and guilt. My divorce had been finalized earlier that day, and I remember my mother and sisters creating a special dinner on our deck overlooking Lake Sammamish. With flowers, twinkle lights, and Thai food, they honored of all the pain and work it took to break my own heart through pursuing divorce. Divorce is agonizing, even when it is necessary.
Months earlier, I had endured hours of shame when taking a required class at the Seattle Courthouse on the divorce process. It was basically a “Are-you-sure-you-know-what-you’re-getting-yourself-into?” primer for the messy journey ahead. Looking around the classroom, I wondered about each person’s story, wanting to know how each woman and man came to be sitting in those thinly cushioned folding chairs on a rainy afternoon watching a painfully matter-of-fact powerpoint presentation on how to successfully end a marriage.
Self-righteous thoughts such as “How did I get here?” and “Why am I the one here when I didn’t break our marriage vows?” ran through my mind in a desperate attempt to make sense of it all. I remember the strong urge I felt to turn around in my second row seat and clarify to the rest of the class that I had done nothing wrong and shouldn’t even be here. That isn’t true, but it did feel true at the time.
Enter Drew, in the middle of that mess. What had begun as a mutual conversation between friends titled, “How did you survive your divorce?” had quietly blossomed into something more like affection, hope, and wonder. It felt too good to be true, and I was skeptical. My broken little Puritanical heart had determined that no less than a year of being single was the required penance I should expect to endure post-divorce. It shouldn’t be this easy, I thought as I was getting to know Drew. But deep down, what I really believed was this:
God shouldn’t be this gracious, and if I accept this gift, I am doing something wrong because I didn’t earn it.
All my life, I had prayed to find hands like Drew’s: strong, kind, warm, with long square-tipped fingers and callouses from guitar-playing. And there they were, freely offered to me on a dock one night in May as we watched the sun set over Lake Sammamish. When I placed my right hand in his left, a fountain of joy bubbled up in me from a place I didn’t know was possible. And then the guilt and self-doubt kicked in:
It's too soon. What will people think of me if we become a couple? Am I just running from one man to another? Should I put an end to this relationship now, before it goes any further? I should have to suffer a little more.
Thank God for friends like Amanda, who gently challenged those anxious notions (“But why? Do you care too much about what other people think?”) She saw resurrection at work in my life when I could not—or would not—see it for myself. She wisely advised Drew, “If Katie tries to run, don’t let her. Be patient with her.” Despite my fear and doubt, I did not let go of Drew’s hand, which was both an exercise in humility and in receiving one of the greatest gifts my heart has ever known.
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In the days following Easter, I’ve been thinking about the hands of God: hands that create, cradle, write on walls, tear down walls, bless, and deliver. Hands that were pierced with love and still bear the marks that love required. The Resurrection dares us to believe, “Maybe God really is this good. Maybe grace truly has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the over-abundant love of God—a love that is infinitely stronger than death.” With this in mind, who are we not to accept the hands of God extended to us in perpetual mercy, especially when we least deserve it?
It is easy to celebrate Easter for precisely one Sunday a year, slipping back into the familiar rhythms of ordinary work-to-earn-your-life on Monday. For those who follow Jesus, the resurrection is just as key as the crucifixion—yet in the evangelical tradition our prayer, worship, and sermons often emphasize the cross over the empty tomb. I wonder if we are uncomfortable with what the resurrected life truly requires of us, which is both everything and nothing. The final line from a beloved Wendell Berry poem offers this simple yet powerful invitation:
Practice resurrection.
It sounds beautiful, but what does it actually mean to practice resurrection? I wonder if it looks like this:
On any given Seattle day from October-June, there exists “The Cloud Cover.” The Cloud Cover is this thick blanket of grey that never quite dissipates, but only becomes a lighter, brighter grey when the sun shines. On the rare occasion of a blue-sky day, people rush outside in their pasty skin and swimsuits, rejoicing at the strange and almost-forgotten celestial orb suspended above them for a brief moment. Most days, the grey prevails. And we learn to live with it, and even to love the coziness of it which also slowly drives us mad by spring.
But.
When you are lucky enough to find yourself in a window seat on a flight departing Seattle during the grey season, there is this one glorious moment when the plane pierces through The Cloud Cover, entering the wondrous Sunshine Land of blue and gold warmth and white fluffy clouds. With The Cloud Cover beneath me and nothing but blue sky surrounding the plane, something heavy in me lifts as I remember that this beauty exists—has always existed—just above the grey, even when I forget it is there.
I wonder if practicing resurrection means remembering the bright world above the cloud cover—keeping life in mind when all we see is death.
In the words of poet David Whyte,
To remember the other world in this world
Is to live in your true inheritance.
Jesus knew how important it would be for his disciples to remember their inheritance after he ascended to heaven. Some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples before heading to the cross were an invitation to remember him:
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying,
“This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
(Luke 22:19)
Later that evening, Jesus took his disciples’ feet in his calloused carpenter hands and washed them. But Peter protested, "No, you shall never wash my feet!” (John 13:8). I wonder if Peter felt the way I felt when Drew took my hand in his:
Jesus shouldn’t be this gracious, and if I accept this gift, I am doing something wrong because I didn’t earn it.
We practice resurrection when we receive and celebrate the gracious love of God each day, refusing the trap of weighing God’s vast and infinite love against our small and finite righteous achievements. We live into resurrection when we remember Jesus’ final words to us as he ascended above our earthly cloud cover into the glorious light of heaven:
And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
(Matthew 28:20)
Be sure of this. I will not forsake you. I will not forget you, even when you forget me.
Perhaps we have forgotten to remember God’s promise to remember us:
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. (Isaiah 49:15,16)
Here is the most beautiful mystery of all:
As we practice remembering the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, resurrection life re-members us.
The resurrection takes every broken, disparate, and seemingly ill-fitting piece of our lives and weaves them into a beautiful whole that tells the bigger story of who we are, how deeply we are loved, and where our ultimate Home lies. Though we may forget God, God does not forget us. God’s hands remember every creature God has made; like a mother with her child, God cannot forget us. In fact, God’s hands are tattooed with love for us. We need only to look at the resurrected hands of Jesus to remember.
I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
To go deeper: