Nate was big on shaking hands. As many men do, he’d shake hands hello and goodbye, and shake the hand of someone introduced to him for the first time, both men and women. He’d also shake the hands of our children’s friends as they arrived to our home, whether youngsters or teens. He especially liked shaking the hands of his own four sons.
If he saw them first thing in the morning, his greeting was always accompanied by a hand shake. Meeting them at a restaurant? A hand shake. Bumping into them at church? A hand shake. In his view, at no time was it ever inappropriate to shake a hand.
Touching another person with a warm gesture — a pat on the back, a hug, a tap on the arm, a hand shake – though brief is enough to reveal what one person thinks of another. It also makes it easier to move forward into whatever comes next, even if it’s a difficult conversation.
Jesus was a good model of positive touching, never missing a chance to touch someone in need, to heal, encourage, or just be kind. I don’t know if shaking hands was in vogue in Jesus’ day, but being a hands-on person probably meant then what it means today: “I’m interested in you.”
One of the most famous paintings of all time was done on the ceiling of Rome’s Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo’s multi-paneled masterpiece crescendos in the highly-charged image of God reaching toward man in a painting entitled “The Creation of Adam.” The hand-to-hand gesture between them was probably as close to a handshake as people got in the year 1512.
Scripture is another place where potent but helpful hand-touching can be found. For example, the disciple John was given a vision of heaven and told to write down what he saw so the rest of us would have some idea of what it will be like. Jesus had left earth for heaven decades before, so when John saw Jesus in the vision, he was overcome with emotion and went face-to-the-floor.
Jesus bent down and put his right hand on John, a hand-touch that communicated love and acceptance. He urged him not to be afraid but to get up and be ready to write down what he would see. That hand on John gave him the confidence to respond as Jesus asked.
The Lord is all for appropriate touching, and some say we can actually “be his hands” here on earth. Then he takes our human touch and injects his supernatural power into it, causing people to move forward through the tough stuff of life.
I wonder how Jesus will greet us when we arrive in heaven. Handshakes all around? Group hugs? Back pats? Whatever it is, I know we’ll welcome it, “hands-down.”
“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.’ ” (Revelation 1:17)