No, Your Other Right

God uses everything in my life. I find analogies and allegories everywhere, maybe in too many places. It’s kind of like when you’re on a diet and everything somehow reminds you of your hunger or your ex-girlfriend—or both.

Well, the last six weeks since my reconstructive shoulder surgery have been filled with frequent doses of tears-worthy pain, many nights robbed of sleep, and hours of recuperation in front of the TV, the Bible, and scariest of all: silence.

In one of those vulnerable quiet moments I stumbled upon the memory of a verse memorized decades ago. Isaiah 41:10. Roughly from memory: “Fear thou not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.”

I’ve heard more than a handful of sermons and college dorm devotionals on that verse, usually as part of a claim-the-promise charge. And I’m sure that’s the intended meaning, a passage I’ve often quoted during prayer and during challenges.

It’s good to know that the God whose hand spans the breadth of the universes lifts the weights of worry and guilt and pain that I can’t. It’s reassuring to know the grip that Satan can’t penetrate secures my salvation and hope and future. And right now, I long for the soft fingers of the Great Physician that unblinded the dark eyes of beggars to touch my right shoulder.

But I got to thinking about my difficulties over the past six weeks—bathing, bathrooming, eating, and typing with my anything-but-dexterous left arm. With my right arm in a movement restrictor, I’ve been unable to do a lot of my favorite things; I’m even growing to appreciate some of the unfavorite things my right arm used to do for me. Like most people today and especially most people during the Bible’s contemporary era, I’m right handed. My favorite Bible guy and noted left-hander, Ehud, killed a king because guards only frisked one side of him. It took artists to make lefties cool in our culture.

So, it makes since that God would say he’d take care of us with his right hand—assumedly his best hand. He’s told us many times that he gives his beloved only good, only the best, only his best. Right-handers are literal thinkers—architects and accountants—so, God’s got his most accurate thinking managing our business. And since Christ stands in heaven on his right side, the Father even has supernatural backup—not that he’d ever need it.

If you and I and a “handful” of other believers occupy his right hand, though, that means he’s running the rest of the show with his left. Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s not hard for my left hand not to know what my right hand doeth. (God gave my portion of athleticism to my brother, so that one of us would have a shot at living up to my dad’s sports reputation.)

So, I’m laying here in the rocker thinking about world peace, human genetics, and the balance of ecology, realizing that this is all left hand stuff for God. Political powers, Satanic suppression—pretty much everything that would make global front page news if he weren’t attending—is left to his second hand. That also implies that all the minutia like sparrows in flight, lilies primping, and dice rolling comes under the shadow of fingers six through ten. He’s running macro and micro in the same palm!

As flattering as that proves to believers as far as prime protection goes, I’m more impressed that all time, all space, all dimensions spin and spread perfectly with one hand tied behind the Maker’s back. And like my little sister swinging punches at my 6’2” frame from the length of one arm pressing my hand against her forehead, no matter if Satan’s throwing hooks or jabs or full-out punches it’s good to know he can’t land any that God doesn’t allow.

Especially since I’ve only got one glove up right now in defense.