These Old Hands

After hitting a recent birthday (not a milestone, but not far from one, either) I noticed that my hands seems to be jumping the gun a bit in terms of looking their age.

Of course, that's all in the eyes of the beholder and I may also look substantially older than my actual age.  But, hey, when you turn 29 you just know things are going to start changing!!  :-D

Most of the time my hands seem to look pretty normal, but there are times when I look at them and wonder how my grandparents' hands attached themselves to my wrists!

Just looking at them and seeing more wrinkles than I thought existed; what seems to be paper like skin with the consistency of wax paper.  How did this happen?

I don't really know the explanation for the changes in my hands, but I have a theory about the process.

Likely, the hands are the open book that are the stories of our lives.  Scars from nicks and cuts show some of the minor hardships we endured.  Wrinkles, the roads we traveled when we weren't sure where we were going, but now show the length of those journeys.

You might notice this when you shake hands with an older person the lines of life tracking across them. 

Those lines represent the hand - wringing when children came home late or forgot to call.  Wrinkles show the care taken around the house on repairs; soaked in hot water while doing laundry; caught in a dog's leash while walking in the rain; or just the day to day process of working a job to provide a house for a family or making that house a home.

So, take a look at your hands and the hands of those you love. 

While you're thinking about hands, I'd also suggest thinking about the hardest working hands of all-time, the scarred hands of Christ.  

Those scars tell the best story of all time - read the summary in John 3:16.