Into God's hands

“The Bible is not some dry and dusty set of rules.  It is the story of how we are created good in God’s eyes, how that goodness was damaged, and how wholeness is ours with God.”

I like what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has to say about the Bible in his foreword to “Fresh from the Word” – the Bible for a change.

“Depravity,” he goes on to say, “came into the world through individual choices, drip by drip.  The Bible is an invitation to wholeness instead of brokenness.  We can choose wholeness and a life of beauty.  We can choose to work for peace in the small choices that face us each day.  Each ofus has the dignity of these choices, whether we are rich or poor, from the global Norht or South, in prison or not.  The Bible shows us how.  It is about peace and reconciliation.  It is about social justice in your neighbourhood.  It is about joy and laughter.”

I have been part of the International Bible Reading Association for almost as long as I can remember.  Some years I haven’t subscribed.  I have been a couple of years recently when I have followed different plans for reading the Bible.  But, perhaps, it’s because I was introduced to it when I was at Junior Church, I have been drawn back to it.

This year they have produced a new set of notes, but they keep the old traditions going strong.  There’s a sense of reading the Bible in copany with others … and the passages and the thoughts that accompany them prompt thought.  While written a long time before publication, they have a wonderful way of speaking into the situation you find yourself in at a particular time.

It's been great sharing with the NACCC in their meetings and conference.  Great meeting old friends and new and because of age-old family links with the NACCC and the partnership with our Congregational Federation through the International Congregational Fellowship feeling very much 'part of the family'.

Not that I wasn't apprehensive about doing the Bible lectures!

I had been emailing Harlan about the closing worship before getting to the conference and we had decided to meet up during the conference.  I bumped into him in the restroom on the first day and said I was a bit apprehensive.  He said with a smile that the whole atmosphere of the conference was simply to put things into God's hands.

We arranged to meet again ... but it got to 7-30 before the 7-45 start of the final worship and we hadn't managed it!

I knew the part I had to play but we hadn't planned anything else at all.

It was one of those occasions when everything came together in a way that seemed so appropriate for all there.  One of those special moments in worship that makes it what it is.

I had already chosen the theme for the service this evening, and prepared my sermon ... and I couldn't help but smile!   It was all about putting things into God's hands!

I drew on some of those Bible notes from the RENEW experience.

I smiled, the, as I saw the theme – God’s Hands and Ours – a set of readings from the Old Testament.

What made me smile was the way not a few people have observed I have of coming back to that image of ‘the hands of God’.   I often come back to that sense we need to have of putting things into God’s hands.  We can do what we can but there comes a point at which we need to put things into God’s hands.

His readings have intrigued me … they speak very much to us at the close of the NACCC meetings, very much to us in this church context too.

Hand in hand with God

we walk into the future with our hands in

the strong hand of God.

That image produces in me that thought that we are not alone, we are not doing things in our own strength …  but it is in the strength of God, the God, whose right hand is majestic in power that we are able to go forward.

The words of Minnie Louise Haskins come very much to my mind with an image of a small hand in a large hand … words I associate with a good friend and neighbbour who has just died, whose funeral I have missed while being away, and who had chosen these words for his lifelong friend and partner to read.

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.

But what do we do with our hands?

Moving on through our readings, Simon Goddard takes us to Leviticus (9:22-24) and a moment when “Aaron lifts his hands towards the people and blessed them..  In that story Moses and Aaron then go into the tent of meeting, that place where  God’s presence is specially felt … and then when they came out, they blessed the people; and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.”

As we gather together in a place which for us is a place where we seek to come to meet God let’s look to receive a blessing … but then let’s go out from this place and be a blessing to other people.  “Each one of us,” suggests Simon Goddard “can be used by God to bless others. … Our words are powerful especially when they are spoken in God’s name.”

We give thanks for

hands that bring a blessing and

for hands handing on the baton.

Whatever part we play in the life of our church, … all of us – our prayer is that we can receive the hand of  God’s blessing and then be a blessing to other people.

And then we have something to pass on.

That's what I sense in the NACCC and the Federation knowing the links from times past with my father and his generation.  We have received the baton from those who have gone before ... and now we are to pass it on.

England may have been out of the World Cup way before USA, Andy Murray may have been out of Wimbledon, but we have the Grand Prix this weekend, the Tour de France starting, and the Commonwealth games in store.   There will be quite a lot of passing the baton on again.

We move on to Numbers 27:15-23 and the point when the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua … lay your hand on him … and commission him”  in the presence of all the people.

That resonates with the keynote verse at the heart of the conference, made into such a wonderful picture - The Lord your God is with you wherever you go!

There is a real sense of receiving something that we pass on – as we share a ministry in this place.  It is not something we invent – but something we pass on.  There is a very powerful symbolism in the  laying on of hands.

The imagery of hands has, however a dark side to it.

As our readings this last ten days moved on we reached 1 Samuel and Job where we encountered ‘the heavy hand of God’ and dark times – and then it was that we arrived at 1  Chronicles and a very real sense that everything comes from God and all we give, we give only what comes from God’s hand, the big hands of God  (1 Chronicles 129:12-14)

In the dark times when we sense

the heavy hand of God

we put ourselves and all we love into

the big hands of God.

We touched on Nehemiah and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the way the gracious hand of  God is on us prompting us to serve other people, on that conviction Job had in the middle of the darkness when he said, I know that my redeemer lives’. We touched on the words of Isaiah that speak of the way our names are engraved on the hands of God and the assurance that comes from sensing that; we touched on the image of ourselves as clay in the hands of God to be moulded and renewed and remoulded in his hands.

May our hands be

hands used in the service of God always

holding on to the hands of hope.

May we know God’s hands always to be

guiding hands, engraved hands

transforming hands.

When you google pictures of hands in the way I have done you can just copy the images – but one sculpture caught my eye and I explored further.  I can see myself getting enthusiastic about the work of Lorenzo Quinn – son of the mid 20^th Century actor, Anthony Quinn.

His work ‘hand of God’ has been exhibited in many places, most recently at the Royal Exchange in London – in 2011 it was exhibited in a major exhibition at the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

It is one of those sculptures that invites you to see yourself in the hand of God.  A wonderful thought that is powerful for us to remember as we celebrate different forms of service and ministry within the life of our church today.

But what struck me was the way two of his sculptures were put side by side in that exhibition.  The other one was called ‘Leap of Faith’.

He says of his inspiration behind Leap of Faith, “The past is set in stone, the present is carving itself in wood, and the future is an empty goblet to fill with dreams.  This is a sculpture that prompts reflection on the need to be positive, even in the darkest moments, because there is always hope.”

“Life is a wonderful journey … if you know how to live it.”

For me that sculpture was all the more powerful for being put together with the Hand of God.   We can take such a leap of faith into the future and sense that we are on the most wonderful of journeys  and find that even in the darkest moments there is hope BECAUSE we start by realising that we are in the Hand of God.

And as Desdond Tutu says in that foreword to Fresh from the Word we are created by God to be a blessing … and we need one another to become such a blessing.

Hand in Hand

Hand in hand with God

we walk into the future with our hands in

the strong hand of God.

We give thanks for

hands that bring a blessing and

for hands handing on the baton.

In the dark times when we sense

the heavy hand of God

we put ourselves and all we love into

the big hands of God.

May our hands be

hands used in the service of God always

holding on to the hands of hope.

May we know God’s hands always to be

guiding hands, engraved hands

transforming hands.                Amen