Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters

I spent a good time one morning in prayer as I painted this picture back in November 2020. The inspiration was the morning reflection on our church Facebook page, written by one of our Readers. She was encouraging us to remember that God’s holding our hand through these difficult times and quoted Isaiah 41:13. I wasn’t familiar with that verse as I usually turn to Isaiah 43:1-7 when going through difficult times.

I started by drawing a frame in red and then got an image off the internet and printed it out. I traced it on to my page and then did the waving lines. I was thinking of the sea and waves because my mind had turned to the. 1970s song from my teenage years::

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently
By putting your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee

I used watercolours and when it came to the bottom of the page I used yellow. This turned my thoughts to the footprints poem. So I did a row of prints, with a gap where there was just one set of footprints to remind myself of the times that Jesus carried me through difficulties.

I used brown for God’s hand after taking quite a while to consider it. God, the Father, who Isaiah refers to, is invisible. So what colour would his ‘hand’ be? In the end I reasoned that God became human, lived in Galilee as therefore would have had brown hands. I have pale skin and so the smaller hand represents mine, and is pink.

I am not sure why I didn’t get around to finishing the blog post on this painting at the time. I had started and it was in drafts without the pictures. So, here it is. Better late than never. In fact the message of the picture is timeless. There is always someone struggling who needs to know that God has them in His hand. I remember one elderly gentleman several years ago who had a wife who was ill. He would often say “underneath are the everlasting arms”. He knew that God was holding him through his difficulties. If you are gong through a rough time today, this one is for you.