Open My Hands

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, January 21st, 2024:
​Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

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1 Corinthians
7:29-31
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Brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Hold everything in this world with an open hand. I don’t know who said that originally, but it has been passed on to me and I periodically reflect on it. 

I’m presuming you are alive—by virtue of the fact that you are reading this—and therefore you have experienced loss. You have lost something or someone. You have lost things hoped for, or things already achieved. You have lost that which you’ve loved and even aspects of your very self have passed away. Some of this is worth mourning. Some of it is worth celebrating. Maybe some of it requires both. The all-encompassing truth is that all we know of this world and all we hold tightly in it will one day slip through our fingers like grains of sand. 

My experience of loss when reflecting on relationships is particularly poignant. I want to hold all those whom I love very closely. I want to keep them safe. I want to protect them. I want them to love me in the ways I prefer to be loved. But this isn’t how human relationship plays out. In human relationships, we tend to wound one another because of our woundedness and propensity to sin. I wound others because I am wounded. Sometimes I wound them out of my fear for their safety. Perhaps I believe I know best how they should live their lives and I openly impose my opinion. Perhaps this fractures the trust between us. Grasping crushes relationships. 

However, it is in the willingness to turn those relationships over to God that freedom and love flourish. It is in honouring their eternal reality over their worldly reality that peace shall reign and God will have His way. When I open my hands to God, all that I hold in them He has access to, and at this moment, my loss becomes my gain, and their gain, and His gain.

Fear is the thief of joy, and the thought of losing can invoke a deep sense of fear within us. But God is the author of life, and joy is His to give. Our open-handed posture not only releases our offering to Him, but it leaves our hands free to receive the good things He has for us. 

So, my friends, it is for the presence of God in you that I will continue to hold you loosely. It is the presence of God in all of you who encourages me to leave my hands open to the things that will last. God is the only lasting relationship—the one eternal relationship. And I always have the option to journey within myself to be together with Him. This is my safety. This is my peace. This is my hope. And this is for always. Let us count ourselves as blessed if we have things we shudder at the thought of losing. And may we never lose sight of the glorious and possession-less world we are travelling toward. 

“Christ made my soul beautiful with the jewels of grace and virtue. I belong to Him whom the angels serve.” - Saint Agnes of Rome 




Lori MacDonald

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