Three Pairs of Hands
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:9-11 NIV
Recently my granddaughter Ella and I put our heads and hands together as my mother and I did decades ago, albeit over a different sort of project.
Ella’s mother, my daughter, was turning 45, and we wanted to create something special for the event.
A wooden inlaid cross my husband Al had created caught my eye. It would make the perfect centerpiece for a string of beads … a necklace for a daughter who loves jewelry.
Ella and I jumped into the car and buzzed to Michael’s. No need to ask for assistance. We knew the way to the “make-you-own” jewelry aisle.
Ella pointed. “There, Mama D.”
“Wooden beads. Perfect.”
“Look, they come in different colors.”
“Which ones match the cross?”
“I think the brown and beige. How ’bout you?”
I nodded.
“And there’s a package of gold ones.”
“For contrast. Perfect.”
And off we hurried toward home.
Gifted in “put-together” skills, Ella was assembling complicated puzzles before she started to school. She’s the “go-to girl” for whatever falls apart. So stringing her mom’s birthday necklace was easy as pie.
As I observed my aged hands working beside Ella’s, the contrast was extreme. Tendons and bulging veins, age spots and lines mark the backs of my hands while hers are soft and smooth. Which took me back to 1958 when I completed my first sewing project at age 12.
As a 4-H farm girl, learning to sew was a given. Mother’s Singer hummed in its on-again/off-again manner long into many a night. I learned to cut out a pattern and manipulate the foot pedal and presser foot with Mother standing over me and guiding me with her hands.
My hands contrasted to Mother’s in those days, as they did twenty years ago not long before Mother died, and as Ella’s do to mine today. One generation teaching another, passing on the skills former generations had passed to them, is a tradition in our family, as it was with the McFarlands in The Calling of Ella McFarland.
But our two pairs of hands didn’t work alone. Three pairs of hands worked together to produce a lovely necklace: Ella’s, mine, and my mother’s.
Such thoughts brought to mind another time, another place when other hands created another project with far greater results: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NIV
The Lord didn’t leave the man alone, nor did He abandon the man’s descendants. God taught His people to pass on their knowledge of Him to their children: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:5-9 NIV
In each family when parents teach their children, a third pair of hands joins them. When invited.
Have you invited the Lord to join you in your daily life? Have you asked Him to lead you as you lead your children? Or set His hands alongside yours to guide them? He will. Just ask.
Dear Lord, When You entered our world through Jesus, You changed the course of all history and spanned the great gulf between us and eternity. We invite you to enter our homes today … our families … our hearts. Set Your hands alongside ours and guide us unto all generations. For Jesus’ sake.