The hands of man can manufacture many things both penetratingly brilliant and utterly astounding. Yet, despite their amazing dexterity and profound skill they cannot manufacture hope. Such a masterpiece as that is left for the hands of God and a manger crafted by those hands.

I much prefer not to fall, unless of course I am falling into the hands of God.

If I think that what I need are the things that my hands craft, I will miss the fact that what I need are the hands of the God who crafted me.

When Christmas has passed, if I find that I am none the better for having engaged it, the only explanation that I can muster up is that I can be handed the greatest of gifts, yet still have the emptiest of hands. And finding myself in that dreadful condition, I am left to assume that the fool within me has chosen to live with the hands that now define me instead of embracing the God Who wishes to fill me.

I have repeatedly found that the darkness is often the thickest at the very moment that it is about to perish at the hands of the light.

I have sat in the impossible places that existed leagues beyond the reach of the prose of men, the touch of friends, and the encouragement of family. And in these horribly famished places where hope languished and desperation ruled, I eventually fell to exhaustion and laid my life in the frigid embrace of an awaiting death only to find that instead I had fallen into the warm hands of a loving God. And while these words are the prose of yet another man, the hands that they speak of are not.

If I am not at 'peace', then I can be altogether confident that I've placed a larger 'piece' of myself in the hands of someone other than God.

To think that we grasp the fullness of life is to say that by holding a mere drop of water in our hands we are able to understand the immensity of the ocean.

There was a moment when any hope within me froze solid and I was finally emptied of all energy to fight the cold. And at the very point of that very surrender, when I became convinced that I must bow to a world that would be forever frigid, God cupped the hands of my soul and poured in the warmth of Christmas.