Hand Musings

The Biblical transliteration for "hand of a warrior" can be rendered "strength of the mighty man". There is a beautiful picture God is trying to get across to us men about the nature of our "strength" by using the metaphor of a hand. Here are some things to think about when meditating on Psalm 127:4.

Most of us have experienced the marvel of an infant wrapping his tiny hand around our finger. As this child grows and becomes more coordinated, he will hold toys in his hands, pick up bits of food with his fingers, point to things that interest him, or leaf through the pages of a book. With each passing year, he will be capable of performing more complex tasks with his hands. These same hands may someday be those of a doctor or nurse, a musician, an artist, a writer, a construction worker, a carpenter, an athlete, or a minister of the gospel.

Emotions can be expressed by the hands. Love and comfort can be shown by a touch of the hand. Likewise anger and hate can be conveyed by a hurtful blow or gesture. So, hands have the potential for causing incalculable goodness as well as evil.

God has a lot to say about hands throughout the Bible, making reference to them over 1,900 times, so there must be something important about our hands. A measure of the importance of any body part, in addition to what God says about it, might be the size of the brain area reserved for its use. Our hands occupy two of the largest spaces in the area of the brain known as the motor cortex.

Our hands can even substitute for eyes, ears, and voice. If we are blind, we can train our hands to read Braille. If deaf, we can train our hands to communicate through sign language. Our tactile discrimination is so keen that we can reach into our pocket and sort change.

Structurally, our hands are the most intricate components of the body. In no other part of our body is so much machinery packed into so small a space. There are eight wrist bones, five bones in the palm, and fourteen in the fingers – a total of 27. Add both hands together and they account for more than a fourth of all the bones in our body.

God has also built a tremendous supply of nerves into our hands to detect heat, touch and pain. We have thousands of nerve endings per square inch, most heavily concentrated in our fingertips. Sensitivity here is extraordinary, even to the extent of a moistened finger determining the direction of the wind. The fingerprints are formed by the time we reach our fourth month in the womb, and it’s no news that they are totally individual. God created your hands to be unique.

The palm of your hand contains one of the body’s richest supplies of sweat glands. The hand was created to work long and hard, to be kept moist by sweat glands so things would not slip out of its grip, and to maintain long periods of activity.

In complexity, the hands dwarf any man-made machine. They are versatile, tireless, swift, and, from birth to death, never need to be idle – except for rest during sleep. It’s calculated that during an average lifetime, finger joints will be extended and flexed at least twenty-five million times. Our hands are by far the most active members of our body, yet how often do you hear people complain about tired hands?

-- from "Thank God It's Monday" by Bill Woodrow