An Extension of Our Heart

We all know of those gifted people who are great working with their hands. It may be someone who loves gardening and can create beautiful bouquets of life in their yard. Perhaps it is someone who enjoys cooking and baking and can create a culinary masterpiece. Then, there are those who can create beautiful works of art that seem to reach out and capture one’s soul. Just watching someone who is an extremely gifted musician can be an experience that fills us with incredible awe. The music they make quickly captures and enthralls the very essence of who we are. Such exquisite beauty and wonder, all coming from the hands of those gifted among us.

Our hands are truly an extension of our heart. With our hands, we can create something incredible. We can bring comfort and healing to the troubled and hurting. With our hands, we can help someone up who has fallen, or support someone who is weakened or whose strength is failing. There is so much essence of who we are that is expressed through the use of our hands.

Even in prayer, our hands play an important role in the expression of our heart. They physically demonstrate the intensity of our emotions. During our times of prayer and worship, our hands reflect a great deal about what we are thinking and feeling. We read how Paul instructed Timothy on this topic where he said, “Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.” (1 Timothy 2:8) 

We reach out to our God each day with prayers and supplications. We call out to Him with humble hearts and tender voices. Let us also reach out to the Lord God Almighty with our hands lifted high. As we read in Psalm 63:4, “So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.”   Again, in Psalm 28:2, “Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to You for help, when I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary.” Then again in Psalm 141:2, “May my prayer be counted as incense before You; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.”

Even during our times of praise and worship at the start of each service, as we reach out to our God with our voices in song, we should also reach out to Him with our hands lifted high. Psalm 134:2 reminds us to, “Lift up your hands to the sanctuary and bless the Lord.”

Let us lift up our hands today as we worship God and give Him thanks for all that He has done for us.

Let us lift up our hands today as we bow our heads in prayer and acknowledge His Lordship in our life.

Let us lift up our hands today as we pray to our Holy God. May He then reach down from Heaven and gently take hold of this extension of our heart.

Those of us with children know that there is nothing more precious to a parent’s heart than to see their child reaching out to them. It is a universal sign that says, “hold me”. Let our hands forever reach out to our Heavenly Father as a gesture that tells Him that we want to be held close as we share with Him the thoughts and desires of our heart.