Your hands go up about thirty times a day and every single time it is a search.
Along the jaw with two fingers, checking. Across the forehead on the way past a window. The little press at the side of the chin that you do without knowing you are doing it, five or six times in a conversation, hunting for something.
And you find things, because a face is a landscape and there is always something. And then the hand comes down and the day carries on and nothing is resolved and it happens again in ninety minutes.
Thirty times a day, for maybe twenty five years. That is a great deal of contact.
And here is the thing I want to put in front of you, because I do not think it has ever been said to you plainly.
None of it was touch.
All of it was measurement. Every one of those thirty contacts was a hand gathering information, and not one of them was a hand doing what hands mostly do, which is comfort something.
I have sat with a great many people at the end of hard weeks, and I can tell you that the difference between a hand on a shoulder that is checking and a hand on a shoulder that is staying is the difference between an examination and a kindness. Everybody knows it instantly when it is done to them.
You have been giving your own face the first one, thirty times a day, for twenty five years.
What an inspecting hand does
Think about what your hand is actually doing on those trips.
It is looking for a change. It runs the same route, at the same three or four places, and it compares what it finds today with what it found this morning. That is a survey, and a survey has a purpose, which is to detect a problem.
Which means the hand goes up already expecting to find something, and a hand that expects to find something always does, because skin is not smooth and never was and never will be on any human being who has ever lived.
You are running a survey that was designed to return a finding every time, and it has never once been able to come back empty. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman the difference between attending to a body and auditing one, and Job 10 says something about skin that has nothing to do with faults.
And here is the second thing, which is the sadder half.
Skin needs contact. That is not a poetic claim, it is an ordinary fact about bodies, and it is why a person who lives alone will often say the thing they miss most is not conversation.
Your face has had a great deal of contact and almost none of it counted, because contact with a purpose attached does not do the work that contact does. A hand that is measuring gives nothing. It only takes a reading.
You are somebody whose skin has been touched constantly and comforted almost never, and thirty inspections a day have never once done what one minute of resting would do. Scripture in Job 10 says God clothed a person with skin and flesh, which is language about a gift rather than about a fault, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a searching hand into a resting one.
Clothed with skin and flesh
Job says something in the middle of the worst stretch of his life that I have never been able to get past.
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. (Job 10:11, King James Version)
Read the verbs. Clothed. Fenced.
Both of them are things you do for somebody. Clothing is what you put on a person because they need covering and warmth. Fencing is what you build around a thing you intend to protect.
Job is not describing a body he is pleased with. He is in agony, he has lost nearly everything, and this is not a happy passage. But even there, the way he speaks about his own skin is as something he was given and dressed in, rather than as a surface with problems on it.
You are wearing something that was put on you deliberately, and your skin has never once been a defect list that arrived by accident. It is written in Job 10 that God clothed him with skin and flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman receive a body as given rather than assigned.
And notice where the language is not.
There is nothing in that verse about how the skin looks. Nothing about smoothness or evenness or age. The whole sentence is about the fact of it, and the care that went into putting it there, and the protection built underneath it.
Which is a completely different conversation from the one your hands have been having.
You are having a conversation with your own face about faults, while the word is having one about clothing and fencing, and those two have never once been the same subject. The Spirit of God is what changes the subject in a woman who has only had one subject for twenty five years, and Job 10 puts the skin down as something God dressed a person in.
One minute, both hands, no finding
So here is the assignment, and it will feel strange, and strange is not a reason to skip it.
Tonight, rest both warm hands on your own face for one full minute without moving them.
Warm them first if they are cold. Cup them over your cheeks and jaw, or over your eyes, whichever is comfortable. And then leave them there. Do not travel. Do not press anywhere. Do not check the place you always check.
That last instruction is the whole exercise. The hand will want to move, because moving is what it has been trained to do, and every one of those small movements is another reading being taken.
You are able to let a hand be still, and a moving hand has never once been able to comfort anything it was measuring. Job 10 says thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stops a hand that has been moving for twenty five years.
Sixty seconds of stillness. That is all.
There is nothing to notice at the end of it and nothing to decide. It is not diagnostic and it is not going to change anything about your skin, and I would not tell you it was. It is one minute of the kind of contact that everybody else in your life already gets from you.
You are able to give your own face sixty seconds of contact that takes no reading at all, and there has never once been a finding required at the end of a minute. The written word in Job 10 speaks of skin as something a person was clothed with, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a still hand into care rather than another inspection.
So here is what I believe is going out over a woman whose hands have only ever gone up to check.
You are not a surface under continuous inspection, and thirty readings a day have never once been the same thing as a hand that stayed. I am not telling you what your hands will find, and I am not asking you to find anything, because finding is the whole habit we are setting down. Job 10 says thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who stills a searching hand.
And this, which is the word I came here carrying:
You are clothed and fenced by somebody who did it on purpose, and there has never once been a moment when your skin was an accident that needed correcting. The Spirit of God is the one who turns contact from measurement into care, and the written word says thou hast fenced me with bones and sinews.
Both hands. One minute. Nothing found.
Declare this over yourself
- Hand that goes to the jaw thirty times a day, you are a survey and you were never a comfort. Job 10:11 says thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, so by the Holy Spirit I keep both hands still for one minute tonight, in the name of Jesus.
- Fear that stillness means missing something, you have never once been right, because a survey always finds. The written word calls this skin a clothing and a fencing, and by the Holy Spirit I am done taking readings on my own face.
- Father, You clothed me with skin and flesh on purpose and never once handed me a defect to manage. Your word in Job 10:11 says You fenced me with bones and sinews, so by Your Spirit I let my hands rest and let contact be care again.
Job 10:11
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