The Hands That Didn't Pull Away

Have you ever noticed yourself reaching for your phone for no apparent reason? Not to check anything specific. Just grab the phone first, then figure out what to do with it.

A researcher at MIT noticed the same thing. Sherry Turkle spent years studying how people relate to technology. But the observation that stopped her was the simplest one. People at red lights. People in checkout lines. The moment there was nothing happening — sixty seconds of nothing — the hands moved. Not because a message had arrived. Not because anything urgent had happened. They reached for a device because they could not tolerate ninety seconds of having nothing in their hands. She was writing about technology. But she named something older than any device. Fear runs our hands. And what our hands reach for is what we are actually trusting.

Human Wisdom

We have a whole vocabulary built around this. Things we hold "in hand." Situations we can "handle." Problems we take "into our own hands." The language assumes that safety lives in the grip. That as long as we are holding something, the worst cannot happen. So when the worst starts to feel close, the hands move. We reach for the phone. We reach for the plan. We reach for research, options, systems. Anything that feels like we are still managing the situation. The problem is not that we reach. The problem is what we reach for. Because what we reach for reveals what we actually believe, regardless of what we say we believe.

Acts 19:21–41

In the city of Ephesus, a man named Demetrius had built a trade on this. His hands made silver shrines of the goddess Artemis. Small enough to carry. Expensive enough to signal devotion. The idol-maker's hands shaped the thing the city bowed to. And then a man named Paul started preaching that the gods hands make are not gods at all. Business slowed down.

Paul was not preaching against Demetrius's business. He was preaching against his gods. And the argument runs back to Isaiah 44. In verses 16–19, a man takes a tree. Burns half for warmth. Roasts his dinner over the same fire. Then carves a god from what is left and bows down to it. Isaiah calls it ridiculous. Not evil. Ridiculous. Half the tree cooked his dinner. He is asking the other half to save his soul.

Gods made by hand are not gods.

But that argument does not stop at the idol. It leads somewhere. If hands cannot make a god, then the question is who made hands. And the answer Paul was preaching was this: the same God whose hands shaped the mountains put his own hands on. At Bethlehem. A baby. Real hands. Real fingers. The kind that grip. The kind that reach. The first thing those hands did was hold on.

That is where this gets strange.

The Cross

Those hands grew up. They learned to hold a hammer. They learned to plane wood and drive nails. And then one day they were nailed.

On a cross outside Jerusalem, his hands were fastened to wood he had made. The hands that had shaped every tree in every forest were held open by iron. And he would not pull away.

We know what it is to pull away. When something costs more than we planned. When staying means absorbing pain we did not sign up for. When the situation is out of our hands and the only thing left is to grip tighter or let go. We pull away. That is just what hands do when they have been burned.

His did not.

Not because he could not. Twelve legions of angels were a word away (Matthew 26:53). The nails were not what held him. He held. He stayed in the open position, arms wide, hands fixed, while the world he made ran out the clock on him. And he would not pull away.

That is the answer to what Demetrius could not figure out. The idol in the shrine needs your hands to hold it up. This God held his hands open so yours could finally let go.

The Resurrection and Ascension

Death closed them. That should have been the end.

It was not. On the third day those hands opened again. He showed them to Thomas. "Put your finger here" (John 20:27). The hands that would not pull away from the cross were the hands that pulled Thomas out of his doubt.

And then at the end — the moment of departure — he lifted them. Over his friends. He raised his hands over the people who had watched him die and blessed them, and while he was blessing them he was carried up (Luke 24:50–51). The last posture of Christ toward us before he sat down at the right hand of the Father was not a throne and not a verdict. It was hands. Open. Lifted. Blessing.

Those are the same hands. All the way through.

What Do Your Hands Reach For?

Which brings it back to the red light. To the checkout line. To the phone you reach for before you know why. To the plans and the systems and the research you exhaust before you finally say, all I can do is pray.

What do your hands reach for when you are afraid?

Because that is the answer to what you actually trust.

His hands are open. They have been for a long time.

This article is drawn from the sermon "The God Who Ruins the Market," preached in the Acts series at Red River Baptist Church, Acts 19:21–41.