Hands

“You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” – Acts 20:34-35

I have always been struck by the poignance of Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders. It’s not hard to imagine him with extended hands here, a laborer’s hands. It’s likely he continued tent-making in Ephesus as he had in Corinth (Acts 18:2), working with leather or cloth made of goat’s hair, using ropes and loops to fashion them into a product that could be sold. His were hands that bore the marks of his profession, work he did not for personal profit, (“I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel”) but to serve. One can’t help hearing the words he later penned in a letter to these same people: “…let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

There is something about this I appreciate as a mostly-stay-at-home mom. This is what we do, isn’t it? We use our hands to take care of necessities and minister to the weak: we wash dishes, load and fold the laundry, wipe butts and noses, dress and feed and tidy. It is an unending stream of manual labor, but it is inseparable from our ministry. The labor is our ministry. The word for “ministry” is Greek hypereteo, from huperetes, which means “rower”: the people hidden unseen in the bottom of the ship, endlessly moving the oars to power the ship forward. It was a job no one wanted, that condemned slaves were consigned to, but Paul says that is the way he has willingly loved and served others.

Not that long before this, another man appeared to friends he would leave soon, and said, “see my hands” (John 20:27). Jesus’ hands too bore the scars of his labors, first as a carpenter who came laboring into this earth in human form, then as one crucified. His hands said it all, bearing the mortal marks of the nails, yet come back to life, able to touch Thomas and the others. Able to stoke a charcoal fire and clean out fish as he continued his labors (John 21:9). He himself lived out the words he spoke, that it is a blessing to be able to labor in our giving, however unseen, whatever the marks they leave on our hands.