When I Lift My Hands

One of the time-honored traditions that we have is raising our hands when we worship. I've often heard that when we raise our hands, it is symbolic of surrender, but in this post I want to open your eyes to another reason we might raise our hands.

For any of you who are parents, it may be that you will understand this better than those who do not have children. Imagine your little one, when they were just learning to walk and were still a little wobbly or even just a bit before that. When they would see you walking by, they would reach up for you to pick them up. There's a lesson in this for us if we'll dig a little deeper. Bro. Atwell used to say that if you were always digging, you'd never know where you might find a nugget.

When we raise our hands, we are doing much the same thing as these children. Our raised hands convey our need for our Heavenly Father. When we raise our hands, we are saying "take me" to God.

Most children don't want people they don't know to pick them up, so there's a matter of familiarity too. When we raise our hands, we do so because we trust God. We recognize our own weakness, but we raise our hands confident in the trust that He won't exploit that weakness nor hold it against us.

It's out of love for the parent that a child wants to be held and comforted. Our love for God is also expressed in our raising of hands.

When Jesus said "for such is the kingdom of God" in reference to children, I wonder if maybe there aren't more lessons we can learn from them (Luke 18:16). In the very next verse Jesus says we need to receive the kingdom of God as a little child (Luke 18:17). It certainly couldn't hurt for us to pick up some childlike qualities.

One of my favorite songs is "I Can't Even Walk Without You Holding My Hand" and it expresses one of the things I feel when I raise my hands. I'll never be ready to walk on my own, but I have a promise, and that is I will never walk alone.

So when I raise my hands, I'm not only praising the Lord. I'm also expressing how much I need Him, how much I love Him, how much I trust Him, and I do so knowing without a shadow of doubt that He will meet me, and take me into His comforting arms because He loves me. I am His child.