Revival and Renewal

There aren’t many things in life I enjoy more than holding my wife’s hand. Her small hand fits right into my palm, and I can feel her fingers over mine. I smile with the thought of it, and through many of the things we have faced together this small, loving touch has  meant more than words ever could.

Holding hands. A Kiss. A hug. These things we expect to see from a man and woman in love. The fact that they hold onto each other the way they do, that they are close, means to us that they care about one another. The human touch ministers to us, reassures us, and reaffirms us of our worthiness as human beings. 

We often forget the goodness of tangible things, whether it is the loving embrace of a spouse, or the great taste of Lou Malnati’s pizza, or the feeling of waves on our feet. We subconsciously enjoy these things, they make us smile, but they struggle to fit into our thinking. Cautious to avoid any materialistic shallowness in our worldview, many of us are almost ashamed that we enjoy the things we do, and exist in a kind of dissonance between what we think we know about God’s plan for the world and how much we frankly enjoy it.

Yet as I think about this, about the loving touches of a wife, or the warm embrace of a father and his son after a long time away, or laughter shared over a good meal, my mind goes to all the places in Scripture where it says that God ministered through the physical. God’s first healing action for a burnt-out Elijah is rest and a good meal (1 Kings 19:4-8). The Psalmist talks about God making streams in the desert to give animals their nourishment, and giving man the joyful task of creating food and wine from the Earth (Ps. 104:10-15). Solomon reminds us of the goodness of marriage, telling us of the sanctifying goodness of marital love (Prov. 5:15-21). And the high-point of God’s redemptive work itself was wrapped up in the tangible, in that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The incarnation of Christ was as clear an expression of God’s use of the tangible as could be displayed. God could be touched, and he could touch. 

This is part of the reason why the The Lord’s Supper is so important. Every time one takes the bread and the cup they are reminded of the tangible nature of Christ’s redemption. He was a real person. You could stretch out your hand and actually touch him. When we come to the table we repeat the scene of Christ’s appearance in the upper room, where he says to the disciples “Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:39, emphasis mine). Christ calls us through the physical elements to real, tangible obedience, and reminds us of a real, tangible redemption in space and time.

As the Lord’s Supper displays God’s joyful use of the tangible, so too does the New Testament warn against disregarding physical enjoyment on the grounds of holiness. Paul’s words are strong to those who think that the way to self-control is merely “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” (Col. 2:22). These people, Paul would remind us, appear wise and religious, but really their methods “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (v.23, also see 4:4-5). Those who believe that the way to get close to God is to distance themselves from anything tangible have more in common with Buddhism than the New Testament. What the New Testament would teach us is the way to know God is rather to come to know Christ, the tangible God-man who took on flesh for our sakes.

When my wife holds my hand it tells me something: my stuff matters to her. I matter to her. And through that joy, God ministers to me. Through the created world we are brought to joy, to the type of enjoyment that directs us to our Creator. The beauty of mountains leads me to glorify their Creator. The enjoyment of a finely created meal is designed to enliven praise in me for the God who loves to create. God uses the physical world to bring grace to us, and this is something that can bring deep thankfulness for the clasp of a hand, or the warm embrace, or the scenic beauty of the natural world.