You’re In Good Hands!

To be loved is to be….in good hands.

During the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell sentenced a soldier to be shot for his crimes. The execution was to take place when the evening curfew bell rang. The bell remained silent. The soldier’s fiancé had climbed into the belfry and clung to the bell’s great clapper to prevent it from striking. When summoned to account for her actions, she wept and showed her bruised and bleeding hands. Deeply moved, Cromwell said, “Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice. Curfew shall not ring tonight!”

While history is replete with such touching examples of rescuing love, no one has loved more, or done more than God Himself. Taking us in His good hands, He bought us at the great cost of His blood. Seeing our anguish and suffering, He saved us – eternally.

Eternally…

This word beckons us into the outer reaches of the future; yet we must remember that it is anchored to the tangible “now” which flows forward moment by moment – unbroken. It speaks of the hope of final healing, but teaches the wonderful truth that salvation includes the lives we live in the flesh today. Healing our physical bodies, bound for death by the curse, is a precious, integral part of God’s providence and love toward us. Therefore, we can be assured that because of God’s providential love, we are in good hands….

We are in good hands. God cares about our pain and suffering. Amazingly, He cares about it more than we do! Man’s word, pain, comes from the Greek word for penalty; we had resigned ourselves to it as an inevitable part of the curse. God disagreed. Providentially, he revealed solutions from nitrous oxide to the powerful pain relievers we now use today. Pain relief was once a fantasy; now, it is a gracious reality.

We are in good hands. God has always known about germs and disease and gave health commands to prevent their spread. Touching a dead body or a bodily discharge made one unclean. Temporary isolation and washing were required before rejoining the community. Waste was burned or buried. God then providentially shared His knowledge with men like Ignaz Semelweiss, Joseph Lister and Alexander Fleming to understand and implement hygiene principles, antiseptics and antibiotics, blessings which have saved countless lives.
We are in good hands. God has cared for us even when we were completely unaware of His provision. In a recent excavation of Herculaneum, a city buried by Mt. Vesuvius, archaeologists found 250 perfectly preserved skeletons with absolutely no evidence of infection. Because of poor hygiene in ancient cultures, such infections should have been prevalent. Why were the people so healthy? Microscopic examination of two of their popular food items, dried pomegranates and figs, showed contamination by Streptomyces bacteria, the bacteria we now use to produce two-thirds of our antibiotics! By God’s loving providence, even ancient methods of food preservation unwittingly brought man health and life.

God lovingly saves us – in the future, and in the now, in the spiritual and in the physical. Indeed, the catalogue of medical discoveries which God has provided mankind is a veritable love letter proclaiming his passion for our bodies as well as our souls. We truly are … in good hands.

Enjoy this 15 minute drama presented by the 2012 Festival winning drama: You’re in Good Hands! View here.