I was roaming around the house and noticed we seem to own a great number of scissors. We have the usual supply in the kitchen. I’m sitting at a desk typing and counting. There are three pair of scissors on top of this desk. I wonder what is going on. Why all the scissors?

Then I remembered what goes along with scissors; hands! We have so many pairs of scissors because our hands aren’t what they used to be. Modern shipping methods dictate that many items come in impenetrable shrink wrap. Just the other day I had a wrestling match with a DVD. If you are under twenty you will need to ask someone old, what is a DVD? How are you doing keeping up with technology?

Take a minute and look at your hands.

When you were a baby they were used for grasping and directing items to your mouth. It was a moment of great joy when you could hold your own bottle. Then you learned to touch items and throw them. It drove your parents crazy. The same behavior delighted your grandparents. You can’t trust grandparents, they think everything your child does is cute and sweet. It is!!

As a child, you learned to hold and direct pencils and crayons. Do you remember the “fat” pencils and crayons of early elementary school? You were a big kid when you used big people sized pencils and crayons, which were smaller, paradoxically. We would later discover that big people stopped using crayons at all in the fifth grade. Perhaps that is why adult coloring books are popular. We are regressing to our elementary state and finally using those “big people” sized crayons that we outgrew in elementary school.

As you grew older your hands held baseball bats, were surrounded by gloves. Hands were used to hurl balls and hold bike handles. Your hands could climb a tree and hold a fishing pole. Your hands could twirl a baton, make music on a piano and learned how to manipulate the items in the kitchen in such a way you could say, “I cooked that.” I guess today hands learn to operate the controllers for video games.

Hands belonging to teenagers wanted to hold the hands of a boyfriend or girlfriend. Your hands would learn to hold a steering wheel. Hands would receive diplomas. Your hands would go with you as your launched a career. Maybe a minister said to you as you held hands, “I declare to you since you have joined hands, shared vows and given rings, you are husband and wife together.”

If you were lucky your hands held your child. You looked down at that little one and one of the first things you did was to count fingers and toes. You would be amazed when your baby wrapped their whole hand around one of your fingers and held it tightly. You would watch the hands as your child learned to grasp and hold their bottle. You would smile and then frown as your child learned to re-decorate your family room using only their hands. You would go nuts when the grandparents gave your child some noise making percussion toy, which your child would play with exuberance as you tried to nap.

Look back at your hands. They might be wrinkled. They might have scars where you have cut them or smashed them. Your hands might be bent with arthritis or not function as well as they used to. Your hands might be weaker than before and thus the need for many pairs of scissors to aid those hands. I enjoy the Lay’s potato chips just as much, even though I used scissors to open the package.

You hands might be calloused with work and stained with sin. Yet to Jesus your hands are precious. Your hands are the hands of one of His children. He has counted your fingers and toes. He even knows the number of hairs on your head.

One day you will put your hands into the hands of Jesus and He will usher you home. His hands formed all that is. His hands learned to do what human hands do. His hands are scarred too. His hands touched the lepers, fed the hungry, raised the dead, and were fastened to the cross. He holds all of time in the palm of His hands.

His hands are strong and compassionate. His hands are outstretched for you. Go ahead take His hand.