Its Good Friday afternoon as I write from the desk in our Arizona home, and it seems a fitting time to pen some thoughts about “bodies” that have been percolating in my mind for a while now. These thoughts were brought to mind again by an encounter on my morning walk, and I’ll tell that story at the end.
My body is aging! My hands are pocked with age spots. My feet have bunions, and are lined with noticeable veins which move upwards on my legs creating a series of purple lined road maps going in every direction. My eyes don’t see as well as they once did, and furthermore, there’s some loose skin underneath my eyebrows that never used to be there. The little lines marching up and down from the edges of my lips are more deeply entrenched there all the time, and I haven’t even mentioned the crinkly skin...However, no matter what the condition of my body, there is something grand about it that will never change. It was created to house God, and furthermore, it won’t explode in doing so. Allan Hood, my on line teacher pointed that out recently, and it really impacted me. Imagine, our bodies are created to house God, and that’s what’s happening when the Holy Spirit indwells us. That’s an amazing and encouraging thought, and it doesn’t take long as we push forward on that thought to understand that bodies are important. Jesus has a human body, like our bodies, and without that body He would not have been able to die for us. Without our bodies, we in turn have no platform from which to worship Him, love Him, or walk with Him. Our imperfect bodies are growing older, but we can still use them to show kindness, even as they age and fade.
Here's a song by Steve Bell that I love. It speaks well to the importance of our bodies.
KINDNESS
Christ has no body here but ours
No hands no feet here, on earth but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which He looks on this world, with kindness
Ours are the hands through which He works
Ours are the feet on which he moves
Ours the voices through which He speaks to this world, with kindness
Through our touch, our smile, our listening ear
Embodied in us, Jesus is living here.
Let us go now, inspirited, into this world with kindness.
Art by Carla Dyck
Yes, arthritic hands can still give a loving touch. Feeble arms can still hug. Rheumy eyes can still gaze tenderly with the eyes of heaven, while listening ears strain to hear.
And so we come to the story of my morning walk. I noticed a car pull up to the curb ahead of me, adjacent to the community mail boxes. The car door opened, and after a while, a gentleman, with a full head of white hair, climbed slowly out of the car, and he made his way hesitatingly, toward the curb. He was just stepping onto it as I reached the mailbox at the same time as him. I couldn’t help but notice that he was quite bent over, and the sole of one shoe was quite a bit thicker than the other. He turned to look at me, and I expected that I might see pain etched on his face because of his mobility difficulties, but instead I saw the brightest smile one could wish to see. He looked right at me, and said, “How are you?” His eyes were shining with joy, and I felt as though he really cared about me, a stranger. That encounter cheered me for the rest of my walk home, and brought home to me once again that our bodies are important, and life is a gift.