Hands

Yesterday and today I used my hands, a lot. I spent both days reorganizing the file cabinets of Lespwa Timoun, determined to increase the efficiency of finding files of patients. I started by dividing the cabinets into letters by making cardboard dividers. I was in the zone; it was like arts and crafts time in elementary school. I was stapling together cardboard, coloring and sharpie-ing things. And I was getting some interesting stares from all of the Haitians who were surely thinking: "What is this crazy white boy doing?"
I then started (and will likely not finish for some time), dividing each letter into small folders (Ex: Sa, Se, Si) so as to make file finding even easier. Today I worked on the letter J for over 5 hours and STILL did not finish. I must have organized over 2,000 files.

Before: An Incredible jumbled mess of paper

After: A slightly more organized jumble.
More organizing to come.
Thanks for the skillz MOM!

Every day we all use our hands doing lots of things: brushing our teeth, drinking our coffee, or signing contracts. 

But I've been thinking a lot about my hands, hands in general. They are arguably the greatest gift of our physical body that God gave us. Especially the opposable thumb. Just ask the raccoon versus the dog. Who is able to open the ice chest and get all the goodies?

The idea about thinking about hands came to me the other day when I used the word "hands" as my centering prayer word. I had read one of the Psalms where David expounded upon God's hands on everything. It seemed like a fitting (and new) word to use for meditation. But what I found was that, as I kept repeating the word in my head was that I kept saying it in creole, which, interestingly enough, is "men".
So I kept trying to think about hands and kept saying men. And it was then that I started thinking about the incredible overlap between these two words: hands and men, or more importantly and PC, mankind...or humanity (if you want to be real PC).

         I have been incredibly fortunate the past few weeks to be using my hands in better ways, ways I had been desiring. Whether it has been digging in a garden, hammering nails in on a roof, holding back a Haitian's tongue with a tongue depressor, or taking blood pressures, I can sincerely say that my hands have are being used by God. Not that he was not using my hands in school when I would plug away at an Econ problem set, but all of that "handy"-work seems very trivial and intangible at this moment.
         Every day before all meals or before long days of medical and dental work, all of the members of the team (Haitian and American), all members of the one body of Christ, join hands together in a large, interlocked circle and pray. At first I did not think about this image, but the more I have done it, the more I think about the famous drawing of all of the children holding hands surrounding the world. We are all joining hands for one common purpose, for one common goal. Some of us might have better ways of organizing a file cabinet, or removing a decayed molar, or driving a flatbed truck all the way up to Crochu, but, in the end, we can only achieve success if we decide to take our brothers' hands and each give our strengths to the common good. It is when these gifts can be bonded and unified that men can truly form one body of Jesus Christ.

Today's Daily Office Lesson fits right in:
1 Corinithians 12: 4-7; 12
"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it with Christ."

Ben Harper's "With My Own Two Hands"