Anyone Can Whistle

They Cut Off Their Hands

"Long sleeves or short?" they leered. And then they hacked away.

I watched Blood Diamonds tonight, and my mind got stuck on a few gut-wrenching images. Cutting off hands was the main one.

I do that a lot; get stuck on things and can't let go. It happens with Bible passages, or songs, or lines of poetry, or even a person. Tonight my mind clings to hands. I used to have nightmares about losing my hands; that and losing my younger brother in a housefire. But that's a different story.

My hands are my life--no surprise there, hey; I don't suppose there are too many people who consider their hands expendable. Hands are for playing piano, for writing, for painting, for playing basketball, for holding kids, for petting animals, for wiping away tears, for combing my little sister's hair, for cooking, for praying. . .

Maybe you can pray without your hands; maybe I can too. But there's something about curling up in a ball, with my knees tucked in close to my battered and wrung-out soul, as close as they can possibly get, with my head buried deep into my tear-stained sweatshirt, and my trembling arms binding the whole miserable package together, buckled finally by clenched, white-knuckled hands; a repentant, or angry, or helpless, or floundering, or bitterly disappointed soul pleading with the Lord of heaven an earth -- it's times like these when I need my hands, or I fall apart.

I remember too, His hands, the ones riven by nails, and it's because of those iron pegs that I can stagger to the throne of grace and drop my burdens there.

posted by whistler @ 4/09/2007 09:08:00 p.m.