Hold my Hand

This has come up a lot recently in my devotional-esque thoughts. Holding Jesus’ hand.

So often, and I’m chatting with God throughout the day, the very needy and fearful thought returns to my mind again and again – hold my hand, Jesus. I know I’ll fall, I know I’ll fail, but if you just hold my hand, you can pull me back up and we can keep on walking down this road together.

I wrote a short devotional about this in my journal sometime in college. The story goes something like this:

A man and a little girl are walking through a slippery, crowded street. She is in her best dress, with her hair done up and shiny new shoes on her feet. She is ready to put her best foot forward.
Next to her, her dad holds out his hand, ready to hold hers as they push through the crowd.
At first, she doesn’t need his hand. She walks carefully, looking down, making sure her new shoes don’t get scuffed up, dodging knees and pants.
Then, she falls on her rear.
Tearing up a bit, and panicking because of all of the people around her, she squeeks a little and cries. She’s afraid her dad walked on, didn’t notice that she fell, or thought to himself “serves her right for showing off her new shoes and not paying attention.”
But she blindly, hoping, throws out her hand anyway, reaching as high as she can with fingers outstretched.
He grabs her hand with his big, solid warm ones. They are calloused and scarred, but they’re the strongest, most gentle hands she knows, and she trusts them.
He pulls her up, murmering and wiping away her tears.
They keep on walking.
This time, she holds his hand tightly.
But then, she starts getting impatient and uncomfortable. Repeatedly, she begs him to lift her up on his shoulder so she can see what’s ahead, and take the weight off of her feet for awhile.
Gently, he says no, he cannot do that. Not because he is incapable, but because that’s not what’s best for her, what his plan of their time includes.
She stomps her feet in frusteration and lets go of his hand, almost immediately flying face-first into the ground.


You see the point.

I was entertained by this as I listened to a sermon I had missed at church by John Wilkenson, our teen pastor, and possibly one of the greatest speakers I’ve ever heard. He told the story of how he went to a big farm shor in PA (because that’s what we do for fun here), and he and his family with three children got stuck in a bottle-necked crowd heading out of one section of the event. While there, a lady started screaming about how she had lost her son in the crowd, and she was shoving and yelling in desperation. At the same time, about every ten seconds, his son was asking, “where are we going? What’s up ahead? Can you see? What’s going on?” and John just held on tight to his boy, not letting him go, but not taking the time to explain every thing, just saying, sit tight, it’ll be all right.

Then, this morning, I was reading a devotional by my favorite Christian author, Max Lucado. He is discussing the phrase “lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s prayer. Here’s what he has to say:

“Imagine a father and son walking down an icy street. The father cautions the boy to be careful, but the boy is too excited to slow down. He hits the first patch of ice. Up go the feet and down plops the bottom. Dad comes along and helps him to his feet. The boy apologizes for disregarding the warning and then, tightly holding his father’s big hand, he asks, “Keep me from the slippery spots. Don’t let me fall again.”

This example, to me, never gets old. It helps that I have a great relationship with my dad, and can perfectly picture these examples as they were played out in my own life. But I cannot think of a more simple, clear, and touching way to depict our relationship with Christ. All theological intricacies aside: we are children, holding the hand of the Father, trusting him to hold on tight, not leave us behind, and to be tall enough to see what’s ahead and be with us through it.