Body Knowledge

“We believe with our daily lives.” -- Sojourners March 2021, pg. 49

 

With each day dawning during Lent we know Good Friday is coming. 

The image of nails protruding through Jesus’s hands and feet will confront us. I can easily picture a close-up view of bleeding, nailed hands overlapping each other, dirty and wet with sweat.

Those same hands that healed and hugged, hammered and lifted a cup He prayed to pass, are limp and bleeding and lifeless on Good Friday.

Those same scarred hands that Jesus showed to the disciples after his Resurrection, to prove He was himself, this inescapable image of His hands reminds me that he is no longer fully human. He has ascended and leaves us on earth, His beloved students, with His example of humanness as our playbook.

His invitation is to follow him, not only with our hearts and minds, but also with our hands and feet. Sadly we are weak in our following game. Our healthy, strong, un-punctured hands and feet are as Adam’s on the Sistine ceiling, feebly lifted. We need divine inspiration and a lot of grace, so the recalibration of Lent blesses us each year. We find a moment to be with Him here, now . . . 

Dear Lord,

Thank you for this moment of divine connection, for the inspiration I find looking down at my hands, for the invitation to do your work. Help me to faith in you actively, to hear your guiding whisper and take that first footstep on the path you have illuminated for me today.  I breathe You in and we begin.

Amen 

 

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
~ Teresa of Ávila

Beth Christian