Imagine a Life Without Touch

I am not one of these guys that is especially huggy.  I know a few of those guys who are the huggy kind – they hug everybody and anybody.  That seems especially true of the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.  Did you notice that he hugged every single draft pick (at least as long as I watched)?  I heard Greg Brinda on WKNR comment that he set a record hug of nearly 11 seconds.  Is that wrong for a guy?  Was he whispering sweet nothings into the guys ear? 

One thing that causes people to not hug or touch is the fear of infectious diseases.  I made the mistake of watching the movie Contagion.  Talk about a freaky kind of a movie.  Made you definitely think twice about making any physical contact with anybody.  Here is the trailer.

Contagion Trailer

Despite the movie, I can’t imagine life without some form of physical contact.  God did not wire us that way.  We were wired for relationship and relationship involves touch.  In looking in my bible concordance I was struck by the various uses of hands:

• Laying on of hands is a symbol of identification
• Touch not the unclean thing as a warning to stay away from that which corrupts
• Cleansing our hands as a symbol of purity
• Lifting of of holy hands in worship
• Touching Jesus to be healed
• Jesus healing with a touch

My favorite illustration of touch is in the story of the prodigal son.  On the son’s return, the father sees his son from a distance and runs to him and embraces him (Luke 15:20).  That word conveys the idea of gripping strongly without letting go.  It is sometimes used to mean “fall upon” with difficulty to separate.  We have all felt a warm embrace that is not surface level.  My friend Vince embraces like that – it conveys an unmistakable love.  It is the same word used of the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:37 who embraced Paul when they thought they would never see him again. 

The absence of touch would much more affect us than the presence of some sickness.  We as human beings must have that physical touch.  We hear sad stories of Romanian orphans who are so numerous that they never feel the presence of physical touch and are literally starving for it.  We are wired for it.  It is part of our human expression. 

The Approachable God

As I think about the impact of Easter, it is all about the God of the universe becoming more vulnerable. The God of the universe displaying His heart. How was God able to perfectly come to man in love.

I try to read through the Bible systematically each year and it sometimes is a struggle to get through some of the tedious passages such as in Leviticus and Numbers. God puts them in there for lots of reasons, but nowhere more than to demonstrate the contrast of the unapproachable God against the approachable God. The Israelite could not take the name of God upon his lips. We have trouble visualizing what that means because we approach God so flippantly. The tabernacle was not that way. Just consider just the ark of the covenant.

The ark was made of wood representing man. It is surrounded by gold representing kingship and deity. Gold and wood are together, but never mixed. In between is the mercy-seat. Christ is the perfect intermediary. It cannot be a mercy seat without the priest shedding blood over it. That is what makes it a mercy seat. Everything revolves around the mercy seat, which is made of infallible pure gold. The perfect Christ has blood shed over it so that we can approach God on the basis of the mercy seat. There are two cherubim that cannot look up, but must look towards the mercy seat.

There are objects contained inside the mercy seat. Don't miss this symbolism. If the mercy seat truly is everything, then the objects have to be contained inside it. In the ark is the manna which demonstrates the sustenance of life. Christ is the bread of life. Also in the ark is Aaron's rod that budded. This speaks of resurrection. Before God's involvement, it was a dead stick. Only by God's direct involvement did it bud. You were a dead stick but when you came to mercy by Christ's resurrection, you were budded. You could not bud on your own - you had to have God's direct intermediation to be budded. We are raised with Christ on the basis of His mercy and God's direct involvement. Finally there was the book of the law, the commandments which are inside. The commandments can only be a basis of mercy if they are covered by mercy. If the commandments were outside the ark, you would not be judged on the basis of mercy.

I pray you will see that you can only come to God through the mercy seat. In this Easter season, take the path to mercy.

DebSue is 52

Yes, hard to believe but my wonderful wife turned 52 years old this past week.  Since we have been married nearly 27 years, she has been married to me more than half of her (and mine) life.  Poor girl!  She has aged quite gracefully and writes her own blog, which is very well followed.  You can find it here.  She also writes a daily haiku called "Elixir of Life" which is a daily quip about coffee.  She can follow her on Twitter.  Deb is a professional photographer and quite a good one if I do say so myself.  Her gift is the ability to find things that many of us can't find, especially tunnel vision males like her husband.  She does not enjoy portraits or posing type pictures.  She can find the shots that would not be obvious to other people.  Enough of the shameless promotion.

I think Internet dating services like eharmony.com and match.com are ok.  I know people who use them and are satisfied with the results.  However, I am concerned that for the Christian they may be steering us down the wrong path.  Because these services focus on the person more like us or more like we envision we want our partner to be.  This is risky.  I know for a fact I would not have picked out Deb based on our similarities.  We have more differences than similarities from this perspective.  However, if each of us is the same, probably one of us is unnecessary.  I would not be nearly the person I am were it not for the appreciation of things I gained from my wife. She has insight, interests, and abilities that I could never have. For example, her love of history, art, and some could argue useless facts.  She is amazing on Jeopardy and I have encouraged her to try and enter. As a team on Jeopardy, we could do well because I would get sports and business and she would get everything else.  Like the guy who said he teamed with Michael Jordon to score 40 points in the game (Jordan scored 36).  She is incredibly free-form, creative, and even goofy which balances my linear, tunnel vision approach.  Two of our daughters have this creative ability and one is more like me in her no-nonsense approach.


Now if she was like me, God would not have enabled me to grow like I have.  I have a much deeper appreciation for the things she brings to the table.  That is truly a God thing.  One plus one equals three.  We do marital mentoring for young couples and we encourage them to look beyond and appreciate the things their mate is and does.  We made the mistake early in our marriage of trying to change the other person to be like the other.  It does not work.  Instead after much torture, we both prayed that God would change us to be transformed so that our marriage would honor Him.  And it did.  And God threw the enjoyment in for good measure.  While we loved having children, we are now in the early phases of being empty-nesters and so far it has been a blast.  I am a better person because of Deb and hopefully she would say the same.  And the best is yet to come!