Both Hands

Digital photograph
2021
From @theheartofluke, artistic reflections curated from Grace EV Free’s community,
inspired by the church’s sermon series on the Gospel of Luke.

Favored. Well pleased. Beloved. These words appear multiple times throughout the first three chapters of Luke (most significantly in 1:28-30, 2:40, 2:52, and 3:22). Mary was favored. Jesus was favored, beloved; God was pleased with him. Yet…

Mary watched her son be rejected, persecuted, tortured, and killed; her life held far more pain than a shameful pregnancy and less-than-ideal circumstances when giving birth. Simeon prophesied of her, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” (2:35)

Jesus himself is called “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” (Is. 53:3) He was led by the Spirit into a wilderness immediately following the Father’s declaration of his belovedness. He wept. He felt the pain of loss, rejection, and betrayal, while also entering into the pain and grief of those around him. And ultimately he experienced a death more painful—emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically—than any of us can ever imagine. How do we hold together his belovedness and the unimaginable pain he experienced? How do we, likewise, keep both hands open to God, receiving and holding together in tension these things that seem to oppose one another—joy and grief, satisfaction and longing, presence and absence?

In this liminal space between what I know to be true and what I am experiencing and feeling, I am learning that honesty—with myself, others, and God—is one of the best ways to keep myself open to the truth I know in the face of all that seems to contradict it.