Troy Hamby

A few months ago, I began to get these weird looking blisters and rash-looking things on my hands. It started off small and almost unnoticeable but as the days went on, it got worse and worse. By about the third week, they got extremely red and puffy and it looked like I had dipped my hands into some sort of chemical that was peeling away the skin. I had no clue what was causing this…I wondered if I was having an allergic reaction or maybe I did come into contact with some chemical. So, I decided to apply some intensive care lotion to my hands, hoping things would get better…and it did, for a few days. So, I stopped thinking about them and worrying about what was causing this reaction.

About 2 months later, the peeling and rash came back with a vengeance. Except now, the ends of all my fingers were extremely calloused and hard. When I went to touch something, I couldn’t feel it with the tips of my fingers. One night, as I was sitting there staring at my hands, the thought ran through my mind “oh crap, maybe I have leprosy!” After frantically searching the internet for hours, I found that there hasn’t been a case of leprosy in the United States for a few decades, so I was probably safe. Thankfully, the mystery condition did go away but I never discovered what the true problem was, I just know that I didn’t have leprosy because my fingers are still attached to my hands! As I look back, I think God allowed this to happen to show me something important about His hands.

As the church, we are supposed to be the hands of Christ here in this world. We are called to heal, pick up, reconcile, feed, clothe and love this world in which we live. Unfortunately, the church at large is experiencing an alarming hand disorder. We gather into our comfortable church buildings, sing our clever worship songs (that are mostly about us) and pay our dues to God. Then, we go home and never allow the gospel of God’s kingdom to penetrate our hearts, never mind the world around us. Over time, signs began to appear that something was wrong. Attendance began to decline, tithes began to plummet, people began to be just ‘not interested’ in what we had to say anymore. But instead of recognizing it as the emergency that it was, we decided to put some lotion on it. We jazzed up our services with cool power point presentations, began to ‘perform’ worship in rock and roll style and began to use hip, fresh words like ‘community’ and ‘post modern’ to describe our new stuff (don’t forget about the candles!) This worked for a little bit. Attendance increased, tithes went back up and people got excited about coming to church again.

But as the months and years went on, the lotion began to wear off and it has become obvious that the ‘hand condition’ never went away…we just covered it up for a while. Now, it has become ten times worse and a new condition has sprung up. When we read in God’s Word about serving and loving the “least of these”, we feel convicted and determine to ‘reach out’ more. We organize outreaches to the local soup kitchen, we rake a few yards in the neighborhood, we raise money for some poor orphans somewhere over in Africa. But, something is wrong. We know that this should make us feel better and that this should make God super proud of us, but it doesn’t. In fact, we have discovered that we just don’t feel ANYTHING anymore. We have become calloused and unfeeling to the world around us and it’s just getting worse.

Now that we’re aware of how leprous we have become, no amount of cool, hip, postmodern worship services will make us happy. The pastor could preach a 15 point message with video clips and points all starting with the letter C, but it still doesn’t fill the void that has been created within us. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! Matthew 25 sounds a warning siren to the American church that we have become calloused and leprous and no church consulting experts or fresher services or snappier titles will heal us. Only when we come to Him with repentant hearts and our calloused hands will we find the healing we so long for and finally become God‘s hands reaching out to a world looking for something real.