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| Salish Nativity scene (from Bitterroot Valley, Montana) |
The Hands of
Joseph
inspired by
Matthew 1:18-22
I see the hands of Joseph. Back and forth along bare
wood they move. There is worry in those working hands, sorting out confusing
thoughts with every stroke. “How can this be, my beautiful Mary now with
child?” Rough with deep splinters, these hands, small, painful splinters like
tiny crosses embedded deeply in this choice to stay with her. He could have
closed his hands to her, said, “No” and let her go to stoning.
But dear Joseph opened both his heart and hands to
this mother and her child. Preparing in these days before with working hands
and wood pressed tight between them. It is these rough hands that will open and
be the first to hold the Child.
I see the hands of John, worn from desert-raging
storms and plucking locusts from sand-ripped rocks beneath the remnant of a
Bethlehem star. A howling wind like some lost wolf cries out beneath the moon,
or was that John? This loneliness, enough to make a grown man mad. He’s waiting
for this, God’s whisper: “Go now. He is coming. You have prepared your hands
enough. Go. He needs your servant hands, your cupping hands to lift the water,
and place his feet upon the path to service and to death. Go now, John, and
open your hands to him. It is time.”
I see a fist held tight and fingers blanched to
white. Prying is no easy task. These fingers find a way of pulling back to old
positions, protecting all that was and is. Blanched to white. No openness. All
fright.
But then the Spirit comes. A holy Christmas dance
begins and blows between the twisted paths. This fist opens slowly, gently,
beautifully, the twisted fingers letting go. Their rock-solid place in line has
eased. And one by one the fingers lift. True color is returned. And through the
deepest of mysteries, the holiest of holies, O longing of longings, beyond all
human imagining this fist, as if awakened from Lazarus’s cold stone dream,
reaches out to hold the tiny newborn hand of God.
—Catherine Alder, Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net
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