Open Hands 2

           

More than twelve years ago I asked my son-in-law to take a picture of my hands, stretched out open in front of me.  I wanted a symbol, a representation, of the fact that my children were not mine to control and neither was my life.  I wrote of that struggle and included that picture in the blog here in September of 2011.

            I want to revisit that picture and that surrender here.  I have been confronting that concept again with nuances.

            My children are still a focus.  One son is in New Zealand and I don’t even see him.  (I am grateful for Face Time and texts and e-mails!)  To that mix have been added two granddaughters and soon, a grandson.  My health must be placed there.  I am, after all, growing older.  My time is there.  I value my quiet and must guard against feelings of resentment when I don’t get it.  My own future is there. 

`           My focus here, though, is my possessions.  “People are more important things,” I preached to my children and hopefully practiced, but I find now that I must again place my possessions in my open hands.  Yes, I told my children that people were more important than things, but I am being tested.  There are children coming to my house now who have not been taught to take care of their own things, much less other people’s.  Am I going to clench my hands on my possessions because I view them as more important than these children?

            Jesus said in Luke 12:15 that one’s life does not consist of the abundance of the things he possesses.  He also said in Matthew 6 that we were not to store up treasures on earth, but in Heaven.  Are my things my treasures?  Perhaps the essential idea is found in Paul’s words in I Corinthians 6.  I am not my own; I am bought with a price.  If I am not my own, everything I “own” is not mine.  I belong to Jesus and so do all my possessions.  I have nothing to clutch to myself.

            Michael Card wrote a song he called “The Things We Leave Behind.  I would like to quote a section of that song.

            Every heart needs to be set free

            from possessions

            that hold it so tight

            ‘Cause freedom’s not found in the things that we own,

            It’s the power to do what is right

            Jesus, our only possession,

            giving becomes our delight

            We can’t imagine the freedom we find

            from the things we leave behind

            We show a love for the world in our lives

            By worshipping goods we possess

            Jesus has laid all our treasures aside

            “Love God above all the rest”

            ‘Cause when we say “No”

            to the things of the world

            We open our hearts

            to the love of the Lord and

            it’s hard to imagine

            the freedom we find

            from the things we leave behind.

Oh, it’s hard to imagine

            the freedom we find

            from the things

            we leave behind.

            Today I want that freedom and I want you to have the freedom we can find by placing our possessions on our open palms.  Do we really believe that people are more important than things? 

                                                                        ~~Faith Himes Lamb