I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much time I spend trying to force things.
I can decide what I think needs to happen, start pushing toward it, wear myself out trying to make it work, and somewhere down the line finally bring it to the Lord and ask Him to help me finish the thing I decided to do.
There’s something kind of ridiculous about that when I really look at it.
It’s like spending hours pushing against a giant rock, praying for more strength, getting frustrated that it won’t move, and finally realizing the Lord was pointing around it the whole time.
I think I’ve done that more times than I could count.
I’ve made decisions and then prayed over them. I’ve picked the answer and then asked for direction. I’ve convinced myself that effort meant I must be doing the right thing. Sometimes I’ve even treated exhaustion like evidence that I was being faithful.
And yet, when I look back over my life, some of the clearest moments of God’s involvement came when I stopped pushing long enough to listen.
On my twelfth birthday, we felt prompted to go camping. While we were gone, an earthquake hit back home. I was young, but that moment stayed with me.
Years later, my family was hiking and we had a strong feeling to turn around and go another way. We did. Nothing dramatic happened afterward. We never found out what we avoided, or whether there was anything there at all.
I keep coming back to this thought:
Some mercies leave no wreckage to explain, just a trail you turned away from and everybody home again.
There have been other moments where the Lord’s help looked completely different.
I remember losing our house in California during a very difficult financial season. On the final day, with the last load gone, I sat alone in the garage holding the key. A little bird flew inside and moved around this empty place where so much of our life had happened.
I can’t completely explain what happened inside me in that moment. I just remember that somehow the weight didn’t weigh quite the same when I left.
Later, we moved our family across the country because we felt our children needed things we were struggling to find where we were. People showed up. Opportunities came. Pieces started coming together in ways I couldn’t have arranged ahead of time.
There have also been small moments when someone’s name came into my mind and I felt like I should call them, text them, or reach out. Sometimes I later learned why. Sometimes I didn’t.
Those experiences have changed the way I think about the hands of Christ.
Isaiah wrote that the Lord had engraved His people upon the palms of His hands. Christ reached out His hands to heal, lift, and save. After His Resurrection, the marks were still there.
And when I look back through my own life, I can see those hands in places I missed while I was living through them.
That’s where this song came from.
I’m starting to understand that I don’t need to wear myself out against every wall I meet. I don’t need to come to God after I’ve settled on the answer. I want His involvement before my ambition gets ahead of me, before fear turns itself into a plan, before I spend another year pushing something He never asked me to move.
My hands have made plenty of messes.
His hands have carried me through them.
I believe Jesus Christ has been far more involved in my life than I have recognized in the moment. I believe He has redirected me, strengthened me, sent people to me, and carried weight I could not carry myself. I believe there are mercies I will never even discover in this life.
And I’m learning to ask sooner.
To listen sooner.
To put my plans in His hands before I exhaust mine trying to make them happen.
That is my testimony behind this song.
His hands have been there.
I want to get better at trusting them from the beginning.
