The Miracle of Hands

This post was first inspired by a segment on a Science Friday podcast from August 16, 2016, which I heard on October 6 (the same episode partially inspired the next post, as well). And then, as God is wont to do on occasion, a completely different form of inspiration came from Rev. Vern Wright’s sermon on Matthew 22:34-46, which he titled Open Hearts, Open Hands. Vern is the Pastor of Second Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

The One who wrote the laws from which the universe was born must occasionally sit back in wonder at all that has come from such simple equations as E=mc² (energy equals mass times the speed of light in a vacuum squared) and F=ma (force equals mass times acceleration). I think the One, God, wrote the laws out of love and curiosity: love for what could be and curiosity about what would be, in hopes that something would come about that would acknowledge the existence of the One and enter into relationship with God. We can only be sure that life exists on our little planet in our smaller-than-average solar system in our average galaxy, but I have faith that earth is not the only body in the universe with life and at least some inclination to believe that we aren’t the only intelligent life in the universe. I have faith that the universe is teeming with as-yet-undiscovered life because the laws that made life possible here apply everywhere; if the ingredients and conditions exist, life will begin. And if the conditions persist, life will evolve in astounding variety, eventually to give rise to intelligent, self-aware creatures that can enter into relationship with the One.

Chances are pretty good, too, that wherever life evolves in the universe, it will, as life has here, be incredibly parsimonious with the genetic material that makes life happen. In our case, life depends on DNA. The almost infinite number of species of protists, plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals on our planet are linked by the double helix. Though we haven’t yet, and may never, identify the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all life on earth, we know that ancient bacterial cells and human beings share at least a few genes in common. We can trace evolutionary heritage by tracing the changes in genes, including how their functions change, back through time as we study living species as well as fossil records. What we know is that rather than recreating the wheel—or in the case I’m about to describe, the fin—genes in one ancestor will do incredibly similar but astonishingly different things in descendant species.

The Hox gene set is responsible for, among other things, the proper assembly of organisms from head to tail/toe and side to side. One set of Hox genes has been identified as the “blueprint page” for limbs on the upper part of the body in vertebrates. Know what the upper part of a fish’s body has? A fin. One fin, in most species. That fin has long, thin bones or spines that support the fin’s purpose. Know what the front paws of a cat, a dog, and a squirrel have in common with that fin? The Hox gene set. Cats, dogs, and squirrels use their paws very differently than fish use their dorsal fins. That same Hox gene set is responsible for the hands of primates, which from an early point in the evolution of the order have provided significant advantages to successive descendants including gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, and human beings.

Especially human beings. We are the only species, so far as we know, in which the Hox gene set that controls the development of upper extremities lead so such incredibly talented appendages. In his sermon this morning, Vern focused on hands as the means by which God’s love is most shown and shared, both in how we love ourselves and as we love others. We use our hands to love ourselves, he said, when we groom ourselves, massage our aching necks (or in my case far more often, knees and ankles), and hug ourselves when we’re worried. We use our hands to love others in obvious ways like caressing lovers and holding hands with the children in our lives and in less obvious ways such as preparing food for community dinners and grocery distributions; writing out cards to people who are celebrating, mourning, or recovering from illness; making signs to carry at a protest for justice and mercy; and wielding a paintbrush on a church work day. Jesus’ hands healed, welcomed, and bore the nails of his crucifixion* for love. 

Vern’s list was extensive and profound. I couldn’t help but think as I listened that his list is why the “holy grail” of prosthetic development is an artificial hand that is indistinguishable both by its recipient and by those who are touched by it from a biological hand (the scene from the beginning of Return of the Jedi when Luke’s new hand is being tested flashed through my head)—and what do developers use to create each improved generation of prosthetic limb but their own hands, used in love to help others. Human imagination being what it is, we find ways to love with hands that never existed or that no longer exist because it is not just our hands that equip us to love, but hands are our default tool for loving ourselves and others. We find ways to make that love for ourselves and others happen whether our hands work or not because we know that it’s what we’re called to do.

I contend that anything we do that celebrates and cherishes life in all its forms is a way of loving God, in addition to acts that we traditionally associate with worship, prayer, and service. We love God, the One who wrote the laws from which the universe was born, with the hands made possible by those laws. Think of all that our hands do to love God: type bulletins and sermons for worship; pick up books to read to learn more about God and the world God’s laws gave to us; hold music from which to sing; play organs, guitars, banjos, and handbells (4-in-hand really is like riding a bicycle!); create art to inspire wonder and awe; prepare slides for microscopic study; aim telescopes for study of the cosmos; key in programs that allow study data to be analyzed in the search for cures to lethal diseases; respond to the talents we have in us and those that others help us to develop to make a positive difference in the world. Human imagination allows those who do not have hands to do the same things in different ways.

It is not, of course, just our hands by which we do these things…but the miracle of human hands, linked to the paws of our cats and dogs and to the fins of the fish in our aquariums by DNA, remind us every moment that we live in a universe imagined and loved into existence by the One who seeks relationship with us. Perhaps the next time the dog jumps up on you with muddy front paws (hands) or you wake up to the cat kneading your stomach with its front paws (hands), remembering that those paws (hands) are not so different from the ones you use to show love to others will make those moments less stressful and more worshipful. Hands (paws) are for loving. It’s in the DNA.

*Even though it’s doubtful that nails were driven through any crucifixion victim’s palms, but more likely the wrists, it still applies because the human wrist bones have some analogous bones in fish and other animals at the base of the upper extremities.