For the one whose hands have given out for eleven months and taken nothing in.
It's twenty past two in the afternoon and there's a blue bowl on the counter with the last of his soup still in it, gone cold now, because he managed four spoonfuls and then could not manage any more.
You're standing beside it with a cloth in your hand. There's a heel of bread on the board that you cut for him an hour ago and that he didn't want. Upstairs he's asleep, and you've got about forty minutes if the pattern holds.
You've been doing this for eleven months. You could list, without stopping to think, every medication, every appointment, and exactly what he will and will not eat on a bad day.
And standing there with a cold bowl and a piece of bread in front of you, what arrives isn't hunger. It's the memory of holding out your own hands for something, years ago, in a room, and of somebody putting something into them.
You can't remember the last time your hands received anything at all.
He gave unto them, and your hands are allowed to receive in a season shaped by somebody else's needs. The written word says He gave it into their hands, and the Spirit has not exempted yours.
The Direction Your Hands Have Been Going
Count what your hands have done for eleven months, because you never have and the tally matters.
They have carried, lifted, washed, cut, buttoned, held, steadied, measured out, and cleared away. Every one of those is an outward motion, in which something leaves your hands and goes to somebody else who needs it.
There's nothing wrong with any of that. It's love, it's the right thing, and you'd do it again tomorrow, which you will. But a hand that only ever gives out for eleven months forgets a motion it used to know.
You can see it in the way you take a cup of tea from somebody. You take it quickly, with a thank you already halfway out, and you are looking at what needs doing next before it has reached the table.
The motion it's forgotten is the open palm held out and waiting. Not doing anything. Simply open, and still, and receiving something placed into it by somebody else.
Your hands have forgotten the open palm that waits and receives. The written word describes a giving into hands, and the Spirit is holding something out to yours.
And Gave Unto Them
Here's the verse, and the verb worth stopping at is the fourth one.
And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.Luke 22:19 (KJV)
He took, He gave thanks, He brake, He gave unto them. Four actions, and every one of them is His. The men in that room did exactly one thing, which was to hold out their hands and take what was put into them.
They didn't prepare it. They didn't earn it, and they would all fail Him within hours of taking it. Their entire part in the transaction was to hold out a hand and receive what was put in it.
That is the smallest possible role in any exchange. It is also the only one available to any of us, and eleven months of giving out has not changed it by a single degree.
Those words went first to twelve men at the end of everything, and they reach a woman at a counter with a cold bowl and forty minutes.
Their whole part was to hold out a hand, and yours is the same. The written word gives Him all four verbs, and the Spirit brings the bread to your counter.
Forty Minutes Is Enough
Be practical, because you're a practical person and abstractions won't reach you.
You have forty minutes and you are going to spend a good deal of it on the washing up and the bedding. Two of those minutes are enough for this, and two minutes is a real quantity that fits inside what you actually have.
Take the heel of bread that is already sitting on the board. Break it with your hands. Say the words over it. Then eat it, standing up, at the counter, beside a cold blue bowl.
Nothing about that is second best. It's a woman receiving from Christ in the room where she has been serving somebody for eleven months, which is a great deal closer to the original occasion than most arrangements ever manage.
That first table was in a borrowed room, at the end of everything, with the washing up still to do and a betrayal already under way. Nobody there was having a restful evening.
Two minutes standing at a counter is a real quantity rather than a gesture. The written word asks for the doing rather than the setting, and the Spirit is in the two minutes.
I Am Not Telling You This Fixes the Season
Be honest, because you have had enough people offer you something small as though it were something large.
Bread at a counter will not make him better, it will not give you a night of proper sleep, and it will not shorten by one day what is coming. I am not going to dress it up as more than it is.
Nor am I telling you that you don't need other people. You do, badly, and more than you're admitting to anybody who asks.
What I want for you is two minutes of receiving. Not a solution. Not an end to the eleven months.
You Cut Bread for Him
Here's the turn, and it's on the board in front of you.
There's a heel of bread on that board because you cut it an hour ago for a man who couldn't eat it. You cut bread, today, in this kitchen, out of love for somebody who was unable to take it.
Look at what's actually sitting on that counter. Bread that was broken for somebody who couldn't receive it, beside a bowl that came back nearly full.
You've been living inside the pattern all day without seeing it. The one who took bread, broke it, and gave it to men who would all abandon Him before morning knows exactly what that counter feels like. He isn't asking you to come somewhere else to meet Him.
You cut bread today for somebody who could not take it, which is the pattern you are standing inside. The written word records Him doing the same, and the Spirit has kept you in that company all day.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
None of this is invented. It agrees with something already settled in Christ, spoken by somebody He lives in, and carried by the Spirit. The rest is God's business rather than yours.
Read it through once, at your own pace.
He gave unto them, and my own hands are allowed to receive something in a season shaped by somebody else's needs. Scripture stands written, that He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, which is four actions that are all His, and one motion that was theirs. The Spirit brings that to a counter with a cold bowl on it. I am not exempt from receiving. I cut bread today for a man who could not take it, which is the pattern I have been standing inside since this morning without once seeing it. I hold out my hands and take what is given.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Luke 22:19
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