I sat with my hands in my lap, listening to the announcements.  When it came time for prayer, instantly two hands reached for mine and held them until the amens echoed around the building.

The hand on my right was my husband’s.  After spending thirty-nine years together, it seemed only natural.  We are always touching, patting, and hugging.  To walk past one another without some sort of physical contact is unthinkable.  What has made this relationship even more remarkable though, is the spiritual sharing and touching.  When two people pray for the same things, hope for the same things, and endure the same things with the help of the same Comforter, two people who were so unalike in the beginning that several people tried to talk us out of this marriage, the closeness can only be with the help of the Divine Creator who united us in far more than holy matrimony.

The other hand came from a friend, someone I have known for several years now, who has supported me in every way imaginable, who has stood by me and has lifted my name up in prayer, who has shared her own trials with me and allowed me to help her as well, someone who lives nearly fifty miles from me, whom I would never have known except that we share the same Savior and the same hope and a place in the same spiritual family.

Some people view holding hands in prayer as nothing more than an outward show of emotionalism.  To me those hands signify the unifying power of the grace of God.  That unity began with 12 men who would never have come together in any other way, and soon spread to add one more.  Some were urbane city dwellers who looked down on lowly Galileans.  Some were working class men while another was a highly educated Pharisee.  Some had Hebrew/Aramaic names while others’ names bore the influence of Hellenism.  One was a Zealot and another his political enemy, a tax collector.  Yet the Lord brought them all together in a unity that conquered the world.

I have held black hands, brown hands and white hands.  I have held plump soft hands and rough calloused hands.  I have held the tender hands of the young and the withered hands of the old.  I have held the hands of lawyers and doctors and plumbers and farmers, teachers and nurses and secretaries and homemakers, hands that hammer nails and hands that type on computer keyboards, hands that cook and sew and even hands that carry a weapon on the job.  We all have this in common—our Lord saved us when none of us deserved it.  That is His unifying power. 

The hand of God is the one that makes all of our hands worth holding.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Romans 15:5-7

Dene Ward

I don’t know how many times I have had someone tell me that my others senses will all improve once I am completely blind.  I just smile and tell them I appreciate their concern.  It is the grateful, loving thing to do, while jumping down their throats and biting their heads off with a sharp retort certainly isn’t.  If they didn’t care so much they wouldn’t try to be helpful, and I am just as responsible for my words as they are for theirs.

As to that comment, it is just a myth.  It isn’t that suddenly your hearing will improve when you can no longer see.  It’s that suddenly you use it to better advantage.  When you could see who was approaching you, you didn’t need to hear the door open, judge the weight of the steps and length of the stride, and determine whose voice it was.  Now you must, so you do.  Even still sighted, I have always seen more than Keith has.  When you have poor vision, you concentrate harder and take care to notice more.  I see signs he never does.  I notice the color of cars and houses.  I know two oak trees flank a driveway, not just one, and I remember that when we go back to someone’s home the second time.  He just looks for the address, numbers I can never see from the car.

All of that made me wonder about our spiritual senses.  Did you know you can find all five mentioned in a figurative context in the Bible?

Jesus had a lot to say about people who are spiritually blind.  For judgment came I into this world, that they that see not may see; and that they that see may become blind. Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and said unto him, Are we also blind? Jesus said unto them, If you were blind, you would have no sin: but now you say, We see: your sin remains, John 9:39-41. 

The prophets also talk about spiritual blindness.  It isn’t just that some people cannot comprehend God’s word—they blind themselves to it when they do not want to see what it says.  Peter also mentions people who are spiritually near-sighted in 2 Pet 1:9.  You can find more passages about spiritual blindness than any of the other senses, and they should scare us all to death.  Be careful when, in a spiritual discussion, you find yourself uttering the words, “I just can’t see that.”  It may be that you have become spiritually blind.

You could make a similarly long list of passages commanding us to “hear,” “listen,” “hearken,” and “take heed.”  Jesus said in the context of the parable of the sower, “Take heed what you hear,” and also, “Take heed HOW you hear.” 

Just as some are “hard of hearing” physically, the prophets and preachers dealt with those who were hard of hearing spiritually.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel both were told to go preach to a people who would “refuse to hear.”  Do you think it cannot happen to us?  The Hebrew writer warns, “See that you do not refuse him who speaks,” 12:25, and Paul warns of those who have “itching ears.”  Keith has special medicine for exactly that thing.  Too bad it doesn’t work on the spiritually deaf as well.

Do you think you can’t have a spiritual problem with your nose?  For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 2 Corinthians 2:15-16.  The point is exactly the same—if you don’t like what becoming a follower of Christ means, it will stink to you, but to those who understand, who comprehend, who hear and see the true nature of things, he will smell wonderful.

The Hebrew writer talks about those who have “tasted the heavenly gift…and the goodness of the word of God” 6:4,5.  If you don’t know people who think the Bible is anything but good, is, in fact, the source of human misery, you haven’t tried too hard to spread it.  Always there are some who take a taste and spit it out with disgust—the same people who cannot see, cannot hear, and cannot smell the sweet aroma of Christ.

And always there are those who cannot feel, whose hearts will never be pricked by the gospel, who are numb to its appeals.  Paul told the Athenians at the Areopagus, And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, Acts 17:26-27.  Not many of those people groped their way to the Lord in the end, but a few did.

Did you notice something about all those spiritual senses?  When a physical sense leaves you, you learn to make better use of the ones that remain.  Unfortunately, when a spiritual sense leaves, the rest seem to follow suit.  If you won’t see, then you won’t hear.  You won’t let the grace of God touch your heart.  You won’t enjoy the smell of his sacrifice nor the taste of his love--if you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, 1 Pet 2:3.

Can you imagine a more miserable existence than never seeing a sunset, never hearing the sweet coo of a baby, never tasting a ripe strawberry, never smelling the yeasty aroma of bread fresh from the oven, or never feeling the warm sun on your back?  That’s exactly the kind of lives people live when their spiritual senses don’t work.  But you can fix them all with one easy cure—heal your heart.  God told Ezekiel that if the people repented he would give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26.  Once your heart can be touched, the other senses will come flooding back into your life, almost overwhelming you with new sensations.

The five physical senses are a wonderful blessing from God.  The spiritual ones are even better.

In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 29:18-19.

Dene Ward

I became a mother for the first time on this day in 1977.  It seems only yesterday that two hours after the high forceps delivery of a sunny side up (nurse talk for a posterior birth) nine pound three and a half ounce, twenty-two inch boy the nurse came in, slapped my thigh and said, “Time for a shower!” 

“Are you nuts?”  I remember asking, not too politely. 

Even as big a bundle as he was, he was still too small for those newborn clothes.  They swallowed him whole, but he grew into them quickly. Now he is bigger than I am and could carry me around.

Jesus said we need to become “as little children,” and many suggestions have been made about what He was referring to, from humility, to total dependence, to being easy to forgive.  But when I thought of my son’s birthday, it struck me that there is one thing that children do far better than anyone else.  In fact, they are made for it--they grow, and they grow quickly!

Not too long ago in a women’s Bible study, one sister suggested that the reason we don’t learn too well, the reason we resist deep study and even complain if a class gets past the things we already know is that we think we have arrived.  We are already mature in Christ and there is nothing new to learn.  Never mind that we just heard something new and didn’t know it—it must not be true if we never heard it before!  And it’s asking too much for us to actually act like a student and work at learning—reading scriptures, doing research, filling out workbooks.

I have been blessed beyond measure with the classes I have taught.  The women in them never complain about the difficult lessons, the number of hours they take and the old chestnuts I debunk--there is no gate called the Needle’s Eye!  They eat up everything I give them, write as fast as their fingers can fly, and have even learned to ask me, “How do you know that?”  Good for them!

Do you remember when Paul and Barnabas passed back through the churches of their first journey a second time, appointing elders in every church, Acts 14:21-23?  Those men had only been Christians for about a year.  Yet Paul told Timothy the elder should not be a novice, 1 Tim 3:6.  Would we ever appoint a man to be an elder after only a year?  So what’s the difference today?  Granted they had miraculous gifts back then, but having them and being wise enough to use them properly are two different things—as the Corinthians show us so well; and Paul tells us that having the completed word of God is far superior to spiritual gifts anyway, 1 Cor 12:31; 13:8-12.  The difference is they grew, evidently as fast as children do, while we sit back and complain about the extra effort involved. 

If I were told that I had to pass a certain course to keep my job, do you think I would study hard?  Of course I would.  If I let my driver’s license expire and had to retake the test, would I study hard, even though I probably know most of what is in that manual?  Yes.  I would not want to even take a chance on failing the test.  So where are my priorities?

I don’t know how much time we have to learn and grow, but God says there is a time for each of us: For when by reason of time you ought to be teachers you have reason again that one should teach you…This is a pass/fail test.  What if my time allotment is already past?  I’m not taking the chance.  How about you?

Of whom we have many things to say, hard of interpretation, seeing you have become dull of hearing.  For when by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as need milk, and not of solid food.  For everyone who partakes of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a baby.  But solid food is for full grown men, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.  Heb 5:11-14.

Dene Ward