he holds my right hand

I am out walking beneath the clouds when I see them, the Father, broad, with a snatch of wild, dark hair that would have looked like flames lighting his head had it been any shade of red, and the tiny girl, still unsteady on her feet, wobbling along beside him, holding his hand.  He reminds me of Disney’s Beast, the dad, especially because the size of the girl in relation makes him look enormous.  If she stretched out her arms as far as they would go, wiggling her fingers in reach, her arms wouldn’t stretch as wide as his shoulders.  I imagine her trying to wrap those delicate little limbs around the barrel of his chest and guess that her fingers would disappear beneath his arms.  He looks at her tenderly, barely moving forward even though she, with her dark, downy hair floating in the wind, takes rapid steps, as quickly as she can manage.

I try not to stare, but just this morning, I had been rehearsing a piece of God’s heart, remembering His Word shared from the perspective of David, the poet-King.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you.  You hold my right hand.

As it happens, this little girl’s Father holds her right hand as they progress a distance that must feel like miles to her but which really only amounts to a few sections of the sidewalk, she, squinting up now into his shining face, calling to him with her still-new voice, and just like that, God grants me the grace to see with my eyes something that had only been simmering in my heart since morning, what it means for Father God to hold my right hand.

I read somewhere that ancient Hebrews believed your heart was in your right hand, connected to the source of life by a vein that meandered there from a finger, and so, to hold someone’s right hand meant to share their heart.  The word for knowledge in Biblical Hebrew, yada, meaning not merely informational knowledge but experiential, intimate knowledge, is related to the Hebrew word for right hand, yamin.  When David wrote, “You hold my right hand,” he probably meant not only to say something about God’s proprietary and protective grasp, that David belongs to God and is led by Him (which David gets to again in the next line of the song), but also about God knowing him by heart.

Since for most people the right hand is (and was) also most dominant, ancient Hebrews also considered it to be the seat of strength and power.  After God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, defeating Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s armies in the process, Moses and Miriam sang, “Your right hand, LORD, was majestic in power.  Your right hand, LORD, shattered the enemy.”  It was with His right hand, and thus both His heart and strength—all the might of His being, that God fought for Israel.  So, when David wrote about God holding his right hand, he also meant, just with that one phrase, to acknowledge that God was the source of David’s strength and power.  David had no weapon in his right hand, he held God’s hand instead.  David was essentially saying, I am strong only because God is STRONG, and He’s holding on to me.

I can know this for myself, in my mind, but that’s not the same as yada knowing it.

I watch the Father now, reading his daughter’s sweet face, glancing down and ahead, to a butterfly she has noticed and points to with her left hand, extended finger yearning, and I know that both things are true, he knows her by heart and he is also her only source of strength.

Especially in the vulnerability of their young childhood, we parents know, we yada, our children, having memorized their smells, the meanings of their cries by tone and rhythm, their tendencies toward distraction and impetuousness.  We hold their right hands, and before they see and respond to something ahead of them, we, with our longer and wider and deeper perspectives, have anticipated what they will do, what they will need, and have adjusted our grip accordingly.  I still yada my children this way, especially Adam because of his disconnectedness, his inability to interpret the world or express himself in it.  His lostness, when it comes to everything that threatens him, only makes me more watchful.

The girl had been looking up into the Father’s face for half a length of sidewalk, having paid no mind at all to where they were going together or what might be around apart from him, but he had seen the butterfly, had already begun to smile at the thought of her discovery, and in fact, it was his smile, his gentle voice urging her to look—Behold, do you not perceive it?–that had helped her find her delight.

She gasps, tries to reach well beyond her scope to catch the butterfly as it passes her, and nearly topples from the over exertion, would have, except that this also her Father had anticipated, and just at the moment when her expression changed with the fearful understanding that she had lost her balance and would most certainly fall, he bent toward her, smoothly sweeping her up in his arms and settling her on his shoulders.  Once again, her expression changed, fear immediately replaced with utter joy.  He’s a good Father; she can trust Him.

“For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand,” the prophet Isaiah spoke on behalf of the LORD, “who says to you, ‘Do not fear.  I will help you.’”

And that’s what it looks like, I’m thinking, as I follow the butterfly on down the road and leave the girl and the Father behind, that’s what it looks like when I walk with God.

I’m just a tiny girl walking a little while with her great big dad.

Nevertheless, I am continually with Him, and He holds my right hand.