“Reach out your hand.”
Reach out to her running solo in this role she didn’t choose. Not back when she was dreaming of wedding gowns with ruffled hems. Not back when she was wrapping a new baby in a royal blue receiving blanket. Not when she read those words of rejection and racked heart pain on the bathroom floor. Reach out to her.
“Reach out your hand.”
Reach out to him reawakening his dream to shift his real history into something better than where he came from. Reach out so he has a chance to retrace what was hard and try another route. Trying to walk refreshed and redeemed. Reach out to him.
“Reach out your hand.”
Reach out to her ripening in age, wishing she could reverse time, just a little bit. Rewind back to relationships she found rare and roguishly raw, but were lost in the progression of life. Be the substantive conversation she remembers, when respect for hard work and religion went farther than a rapid text reply. Reach out to her.
”Reach out your hand.”
Reach out for those whose only response is a reflexive kick in the dark. For those in the room of the womb. The ones in the midst of a raging storm they didn’t create. Reach out for those rapidly, fluttering heartbeats, and those rounding cheeks, those resting retinas waiting for the light to refract. Reach out to the rudimentary cry of the babe just born.
“Reach out your hand”
Because He said it and it wasn’t a question. It was a request. Or more of a requirement. The man’s hand in Matthew chapter 12, the one Jesus happened to notice at the synagogue, the hand that was deformed, that’s when Jesus spoke. To restore and redirect a limb back to it’s intended structure.
“Reach out your hand.”
The man did not come to Jesus, Jesus found the man and spoke those four words. “Reach out your hand.” Reach out to the reason Jesus wrote a rescue plan. Reach out to the reason Jesus resurrected from a tomb carved out of rough rock. Reach out to the reason Jesus reposts in your life every day, “I. Love. You.”
Follow suit, friend. Repeat His words and be the relief for a resentful human soul. Live your story stronger. Repeat His words and recognize the voice of reason. Recognize the recovering disbeliever you were and rebuild that redeeming relationship with the Ray of Hope who spoke those words in front of the doubters. The judgers. The highly critical.
“Reach out your hand”.
Know that when you do that, when you reach out your hand, the comfort of His hand in yours will become the normalcy you’ve craved. The settling of your roving heart. The healing of your restless soul.
That, my friend, is worth reaching for.
~kathy b
kathy brower 