WATCH YOUR HANDS-EVERY MINUTE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

When grandson Joe was about four years old, he brought a cut on his hand to his mother for repair. “How did you get the cut on your hand, Joe?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he replied, a little indignantly. “I can’t watch it every minute.”

A lot of life’s wounds come just because we can’t, or don’t, watch our hands all the time.

I cook just often enough to claim that I can do it. Recently I made meat loaf. I like to make apple sauce meatloaf, but Helen gave me a recipe that uses leek soup mix [better than the onion soup mix usually called for]. That’s even better than apple sauce meatloaf, although apple sauce with the leek meatloaf makes a very nice combination.

I watch my hands very carefully as I make the meatloaf. I have to watch my hands very carefully all the time anymore. I have to look at what I’m doing or I end up with cuts and breaks, to myself and to dishes. That requires doing only one thing at a time. If I do more than one, sort of looking at all of them but not really looking hard at any one, the kitchen is not kind to my hands.

Jesus said that if your hand offends you, you should cut it off. Better to go without a hand than to lose it in sin. I take that as an instruction to watch my hands carefully so that I don’t have to cut one off.

Paul Byrnes preached the first sermon I can actually remember. He was the post master in our town, and a lay preacher. Whenever the District Superintendent couldn’t find a “regular” preacher for our little open-country church, he would send Paul to fill in. That sermon I remember was about hands. Paul preached about hands in the Bible, and what each different set of hands brought to the Bible story. “What do you bring in your hands?” he asked. I’m still answering that question. Sometimes the answer is “meatloaf.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I used to keep a careful index of all the things I told in this blog so that I would not repeat. That has become unwieldy. Now I just trust to… what’s it called… oh, yes, memory. Sorry about that.

I have also started an author blog, JUST WORDS, about writing, in preparation for the publication, by Black Opal Books, of my novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, n 2015. Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I don’t know what that means, but just consider JUST WORDS to be high concept. http://johnrobertmcfarland-author.blogspot.com/

I tweet as yooper1721.