Please Hold My Hand

Without your hand, I try to stand,
But underneath my shoes and socks
The fickle ground just tilts and rocks,
And lands me down upon my knee,
I need your hand to steady me.

Without your hand, were I to go,
And somehow wander from your side,
From either foolishness or pride,
My life would be in jeopardy,
I need your hand to shepherd me.

Your hand is presence, power, and love,
That covers me from up above,
And yet is gentle, as a dove,
Retrieves me if I go astray,
And keeps me in the ancient way.

And even though I’m now a man,
I’m traveling the shadowland,
With burdens I don’t understand,
The path ahead is shifting sand,
I look to You,
please,
hold my hand.

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For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 41, verse 13

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That’s me in the photo, the “big boy” in the middle, walking hand-in-hand with my grandfathers. This photograph well illustrates the true spiritual helplessness and utter dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ of all who receive Him by faith and are reborn into His kingdom. We start out as babes and grow to “maturity” as we walk hand-in-hand with Him through all the various trials and struggles of life.

The longer I have belonged to Him the more I have come to see that, like so many counterintuitive truths in His kingdom, maturity in Christ means depending upon Him more, not less. I used to think of myself as a mature believer and it has taken life’s sore and overwhelming trials for me to realize how helplessness and dependence are a believer’s true spiritual condition that we never outgrow, and maturity is simply discovering this truth more and more deeply. But what a blessed truth this is – to be ever depending more and drawing closer to the One who loves us unimaginably, and in whom is found all the riches of beauty, wisdom, and majesty, is joy indeed.

© Craig Sabin 2021 All rights reserved