I’ve never been happier to be self-employed than during these last five months. When mornings linger long and afternoon naps beckon. I know these quiet days are numbered. So I’m digging in deep and squeezing out every single drop I can.
I was talking with a sweet girlfriend yesterday over lunch about grief. The kind that piles on top of each other. As if grief itself weren’t enough, but sometimes things happen that are the result of another person’s choice (though intentional toward you or not) that pile right on top of it. Magnifying the weight of it. And the hurt.
I’m in the thick of working on a new Bible Study. And have been sitting in His hallowed hollows for a week. And came across something interesting yesterday. A holy play-on-words that shows God’s sense of humor as well has His incredible kindness.
I dug it up in Isaiah 40:12. About how He measures the waters that threaten to drown us in the hollow of His holy and hallowed hand. You know the kind: those moments where you’re sick with grief and have cried your eyes out and feel hollow inside. And all you want to do is crawl into bed, hide under the covers, and throw up your middle finger at it all?
That phrase “the hollow of His hand” that Isaiah describes? Is His palm. The one that your name is tattooed into. And my favorite commentary by Jameison, Fausset & Brown describes it this way: “the span of His hand – the space from the end of the thumb to the middle finger extended.”
He meets us there under the covers. And stretches the thumb-to-middle-finger-extended of His hollow-holy-hand over our hollowed-out and stretched-thin-hearts. Hiding us in the shadow of it. That we might crawl out. And choose joy for one more day.
Oh how I love His manifold mercy.
