I love hands.  So much of Scripture is about hands – hands that create, that work, that cover to protect and to fight.  We are held in our parents hands at birth and our own hands are held by our children and loved ones when we leave.  Hands hold and they let go.  Hands open and they close. Hands say hello and they say good-bye.  We wear on our hands our constant reminder of fidelity and commitment.  From childhood we are taught to fold our hands to pray and open our hands to bless. We give them and we lend them.   Hands are beautiful and smooth.  They are rough and used.  Some are delicate and others are hard. The image of hands is used over and again to describe the love and constancy of God.  We are the work of His hand.  Our times are in His hand.  He has stretched out His hand to redeem and keep us.  The Psalms remind us “With a strong hand and outstretched arm; his love endures forever.”  We are safe in His hand and with His firm hand He is with us when we pass through the waters and when we pass through the rivers that threaten to sweep over us and overwhelm us.  I love hands.

A few weeks ago I was in just such a river and seriously afraid of being swept away.  To get there, a group of us had picked our way carefully over fallen trees and moss covered boulders.  Every step was calculated and tested to keep from slipping or wedging a foot between sharp rocks and slabs of granite.  Our goal was a waterfall at the bottom of a straight fall from a Canadian glacier thousands of feet above us. To get to the falls we had to cross a deep and rapid stream surging against rocks and spilling down a chute .  When I stepped off the last ledge and into the current I was instantly up to my chest in icy, freezing water that took my breath away. Beneath me I could feel the pull of the flood as it rushed toward another fall into boulders below.  I could sense my legs starting to give and the sudden reality of sinking into the undertow made me know I was in a situation I could not easily control. I was over my head and probably in trouble.  This was dangerous – or at least on the edge of dangerous.  It was dangerous enough!  What had begun as an afternoon adventure was now more of a challenge than I had understood only a few minutes ago.  This was not in the brochure and I was not having fun.

Not only was the current tugging at me and the water numbing me but I looked ahead and could not see where the rocks were to keep me from stepping into the deeper places in the stream. In a situation like that you don’t wonder how everyone else is doing.  All you can do is focus on your own dilemma.  You pull in almost completely. Above the roar, I heard a voice.  “Fred, over here.  Grab my hand.”  I looked up and saw one of the group standing with his one arm outstretched and the other pointing toward a flat rock in front of me.  I grabbed his hand and made it.  I looked to my left  and there a few feet away was another member of our group standing knee deep with her hand pointing and pulling me up to balance for a moment on a shelf below the surface.  I had a final few yards to go up a steep and seemingly impossible incline when a third hand reached out from above and hoisted me out of the water and next to him where the footing was safe.  I looked back and they were doing that for everyone crossing.  Somehow they had gotten into the water and in place knowing we were going to flounder.

I’ve thought about those friends and their hands quite a lot since then.  I’ve come to think of them as not simply standing in the stream but being stationed in the stream.  They were there on purpose because they knew we would not make it across without their hands.  I did not know they were there when I dropped off that first ledge into the frigid water.  I thought I was alone and on my own to get through.  I wasn’t.  They were there to pass me along from one to the next.  They were there to make sure I found my footing and watched me until I was safely to the next station.  I have strong feelings today about John, Heather and Brandon.  Their hands were there to get me across and get over.

Some of you are here this week-end and you are working hard against the undertow.  No one knows it and you are so focused on surviving you cannot look around and see how others are doing.  Some of you are picking your way across slippery places hoping not to lose your footing.  Some of you are thinking you are numb and cold and frozen.  Some of you are here because you have been stationed here by God to reach out a hand to steady and point someone to the next place. You are here because you’ve been here before and someone gave you a hand at a time when you needed it.  I want everyone here to know this is a flat place in a flood.  It is a place where you can rest for a few days and not worry about being swept away or pulled under.  Yes, on Sunday we are all going to leave and get back in the boiling stream but for these few days we are together we are safe, we are on the solid rock and we are pulling for each other to make it across.

“But now, this is what the Lord says – he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel.  Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you…For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”