I love being handy!

I am a respiratory therapist in Ozark, and I recently had a patient who needed my help in buttoning up the shoulders of his hospital gown, after I ran a test on him. There is nothing significant about that, but the part that was significant, or thought provoking, came in the way he asked. He didn't say," Hey you unbuttoned me, will you please button me back." He instead said, " Please help me... I have almost lost all use of my hands."

Think about for just a moment how many times a day you use your hands... My typical day consists of waking up, (1) pulling the covers off of me, (2) unplugging my cell phone, (3) turning my phone off of vibrate and into some sound (if I remember) (4,5,6)opening my shirt drawer grabbing a shirt and putting it on, (7,8,9) Doing the same with my shorts/pants, (10,11,12,13)Doing the same with my socks-12 and 13 is my right sock then left or vice versa. That's 13 different times on a day that I decided not to set an alarm the night before, or make my bed, and this is only 5-10 minutes into my day. Oh yeah, and I forgot to shut the three drawers...

In any case, we use our hands a lot, but my real thought is much deeper than how blessed we are to still have use of our hands, no matter how arthritic they may be.

What if this patient of mine were God? We, as the Church, are the body of Christ, but sometimes I do feel as if Christ's body has almost lost all use. How often do we reach out to the lost, to the broken, even to the different. You see the awesome thing that I've come to realize about hands is that they are attached to arms. Seriously, think about the potential of hands attached to arms as compared to hands popped out where your current arm pits are. How would we put on deodorant... would we even need too... would hair still grow there... (back to the matter at hand, pun intended) Hands attached to arms can reach. They can reach out, up, down, or back. They can reach out to the different, up to the Father, down to the sick, and back to those who may have fallen behind.

How productive or useful is a hand that only serves itself? Should a hand bathe and dry only itself? You say that's pretty crazy, but how many churches do we have even in our own city, county, or state that the only reach they do is an in reach? There are times when in reaches are needed, but let's get real. There's a world in need of somebody to reach out to them, and God saw it fit to give us the hands attached to arms to do it with.

So I ask, Christian are you reaching out? Church are you? If not, God's saying, "I have almost lost all use of my hands."

Moral of the story: Arm pits are much cooler than hand pits. Reach out!