"Your body is the first thing any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them.... To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home." from Bed and Board, Robert Farrar Capon

Friday, December 16, 2011

God's Hands


Michelle put this quote up on her blog and I thought is was too good not to share.

     “God’s creatures are merely the hands, channels, and means through which He bestows all good things. For example, He gives breasts and milk to a mother to offer them to her infant; and He gives grain and all kinds of fruits of the earth for food, things that no creature could produce independently. Therefore no one should presume either to take or give anything except as commanded by God, recognizing all these things as God’s gifts and thanking Him for them, as this commandment requires. Conversely, we are not to disdain this way of getting good things from God through His creatures, nor are we arrogantly to seek other ways and means to obtain them than those He commanded; to do so would be not to receive them from God as His gifts but to look for them in ourselves.”

from Martin Luther’s Large Catechism, extended explanation on the First Commandment


Wish my hands looked that beautiful.

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4 comments:

  1. CathyDecember 17, 2011 at 6:40 AM

    I love the imagery of God literally using ME--my hands and my feet and all the rest of me--to perform HIS care for my family. From nursing and changing the diapers of infants, to the feeding and clothing and making a home for the rest of the family, to being the gracious and bending woman that Capon writes about, and the woman Chesterton pities--not because her job is too small and drudge-filled. But because her job is so huge and important. Our hands ARE that beautiful, in God's and our family's eyes. God just hides things like that from us. He that has eyes to see, let him see.
    December 17, 2011 6:37 AM

    ReplyDelete
  2. LeahDecember 17, 2011 at 2:29 PM

    Cathy - God just hides things like that from us. He that has eyes to see, let him see.

    I am finding out that is true in every area of my life. There are some things I am not meant to know, for my own sake. I am to take God at His word, and daily learn more how to trust and obey Him, and leave the results up to Him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mary PDecember 20, 2011 at 3:22 PM

    God can give my children good things through me, selfish and sinful though I am. That's good news. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. CathyDecember 22, 2011 at 8:15 AM

    Yes, and precisely because you are sinful, you have pity on their sinful state.

    ReplyDelete

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