Jesus' Touch

This week, Max kept emphasizing that we need at least ten hugs a day, as he would come up to give me a hug. One of his friends at school has been going around giving hugs, saying “10 hugs a day.”

Last Saturday, I went to a cancer survivors retreat hosted by the Oncology Nurse Society. One chair at each table had a blank post-it note hidden on it. This note entitled the bearer to a 10-minute chair massage. I had the note from my table, and went for my turn during the afternoon break.

I’ve had massages before but never one in an official massage chair. The pads were soft on my knees and my head was cradled comfortably with my forearms resting on a pad in the front. As the masseur massaged my back and neck, I could feel my muscles relax a bit, Since my eyes were closed, I was caught off guard as he began to massage my hands, and memories flooded back in.

Touch has always been important to me. Jeff would sometimes hold hands as we walked but he never liked to do much cuddling. When we would travel by car the passenger had a couple of main jobs. The first was to read aloud to the driver. We read The Lord of the Rings triology, Madeleine L’Engle’s books, C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy and lots of others. The second task is that as the driver’s hands became tired with holding the wheel, the passenger would give a hand massage. It is one of the most wonderful gifts that someone can give—to have the tension and stress eased out through each finger until it all goes out through the tip of the pinkie.

Max’s hugs, hand massages—these are ways that God uses the hands and arms of others to offer healing. As we sing in one of my favorite hymns Now the Green Blade Riseth: “When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain, Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again, fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.”

Matthew 8:15

He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to serve him.