John 1:14

At a wildlife rescue refuge there was a cage of field mice that was needed for certain birds like hawks. We watched as a friend reached into some straw to get a baby mouse to show us. The other mice jumped and ran all over his arm. I wondered why anyone would want to put their arm in there. Perhaps that is what the Angels thought when God reached from Heaven into our lives on earth.

Jesus living among us was one way that God put his loving arms into this cage of humanity where our behavior must often look repulsive to the Holy Angels. He came to our world and experienced our worst, even death on the cross, so that we might have Heaven’s best.

Catherine Marshall told about her father, Rev John Wood, who went to a railroad shop to talk to a man. When he reached out to shake the man’s hand it was declined as the man said, “My hands are too dirty from working on the train, I will get dirt on you.” Rev Wood bent down and rubbed his hands in coal dust and then said, “Will you shake hands now?”

It was not unusual for the people in the Bible who met Jesus to suddenly feel unclean and unworthy. Yet he extended to them, and us, an outreached hand from Heaven that would soon be contaminated and scarred with the sin of the world.

Living in a pandemic has done something to our handshaking that is regrettably necessary. I pray how soon that ends; and I am thankful that Jesus does not have to handle us with gloves. Our lives are made clean the very moment we take His hands. No other has ever extended such a hand to us. I awakened this morning with this old song on my mind:

“Once my soul was astray from the heavenly way
and was wretched and vile as could be,
but my Savior above gave me peace, joy, and love
when he reached down his hand for me.

When he reached down his hand for me,
when he reached down his hand for me,
I was lost and undone without God or his son,
when he reached down his hand for me.”