Daddy, Up?

Something wonderful happened just the other day.  It was a Monday morning, my day off.  Amy and I were hustling about trying to get the day going and the family out of the house.  I can’t say as I remember where we were going, but I’m sure it was important.  After the second time telling the kids to turn off the TV, take potty breaks and put shoes on, Livia came bounding into the living room at a jovial pace and bumped into my busy legs.  She took a stumbled step backward, looked up, noticed my aggravation, threw her hands up and said, “Daddy, up?”

 



"Daddy, up?"

Any ideas what I did?  Duh!  I told her to freeze and I took a picture on my cell phone.  Then, with the familiar voice of that Curious George narrator still coming from the other room and the other kids’ bare feet skipping to the bathroom, I buried my busy-ness and took Livia in my arms.  She wrapped her arms around my neck, her legs around my waste and planted a big wet kiss on my lips (like she sees her Mommy do I suspect).  Needless to say, in that moment of that morning the posture and pace of the Weeda house changed.

 

Later that day, after all the apparently important tasks from the morning became tasks of the past, I was scrolling through my cell phone pictures.  The one of Livia was the last one I looked at…and I looked long on it.  And as I did, it occurred to me, everywhere in the world and for all kinds of reasons people lift their hands into the air.

 

A referee lifts his hands in the air to signal a touchdown (or an interception).  One team, jumping up and down, lifts their hands in the air with triumphant celebration.  One team, slumped over and frustrated, lifts their hands in the air in protest.  One coach, ecstatic and buoyant, lifts his hands in the air to high-five his players.  One coach, incredulous and bitter, lifts his hands in the air in disgust.  Fans of both teams lift their hands in the air with stunned amazement.

 

A band of Muslim protestors, enraged and dire, lift their hands, weapons and all, and rush upon a U.S. Embassy in Libya.  Innocent people put their hands out and up and wherever, backing away, keeping balanced as they run for their lives.  An ambassador; a representative of a foreign nation of foreign people with foreign religions, lifts his hands in the air with fear and trembling.  His hands fall lifeless.  Across the globe in response people lift their hands in the air crying out in anger and panic and terror and celebration, shaking fists, waving gestures, clapping.

 

More locally, I thought of other examples…

 

Those old western movies when robbers come riding into town, tie up their horses outside the bank, look up and down the street, slip a bandana over their face, swing open the door with guns pulled and say, “Stick ‘em up!”    |    Those gangster movies portraying the 1930’s when cops would flood the street outside an rundown office building, jump out of their cars, tuck themselves behind a car door or fender, point their guns at the dimly lit windows and say, “Come out with your hands up!”    |    That song from the 1990’s when the dance party heats up, the music is pumping, house is bumping, base is thumping… “Throw your hands in the air, and wave them like you just don’t care.”    |    The World Cup Finals when the crowd starts jumping and chanting and singing anthems, the ball is advanced, defenders are few, a fake to the left, a kick to a teammate, off his head and into the… “Goooooooooooooal!”    |    The couple, married for ten years, when fighting has gone on long enough, wits have passed their end, fuses have long burned down, emotions are exhausted, backs turn, doors slam… “I’m done.”

 

Then I thought about worship time, you know, at church.  How many times we’ll be in church singing songs and as the verses build toward the chorus with the kick drum hitting hard and the bass amping up, hands go up in the air.  And as I began to imagine the varying postures of worship I opened my Bible… 

 

In seasons of desperation and pain, even intercession:  

“Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! 

Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! 

Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children,

who faint for hunger at the head of every street.”

– Lamentations 2:19

 

In seasons of need and sought after help and mercy:

“Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help,

when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.”

– Psalm 28:2

 

In seasons of repentance:

“Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD!

Let us lift up our hearts and hand to God in heaven…”

– Lamentations 3:40-41

 

In seasons of adoration for God’s Word:

“I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.”

– Psalm 119:48

 

In seasons of praise and declaring blessings:

“Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, who stand by night in the house of the LORD!

Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!

May the LORD bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth!”

– Psalm 134

 

In seasons of quiet sacrifice and listening:

“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

– Psalm 141:2

I did not come upon these verses in this order and, as you can tell, they are not in an order that aligns with book and verse in the Bible.  I arranged them as such because as I read them and reflected on them, eventually in this order, I imagined my hands being progressively raised in the air.  Starting from a hands-out-palms-up posture of desperation or pain to a similar but slightly raised posture of needful expression to an arms-up-elbows-bent-palms-out posture of repentance to an arms-up-palms-out posture of adoration for God’s Word to a fully-extended-hands-to-the-heavens posture of praise and finally back to a settled hands-out-palms-up posture of sacrifice.

I realize that my descriptions of postures may be difficult for you to imagine.  They are words placed over top of a series of pictures in my mind.  Words can, in any give scenario, help us in our understanding or hinder us in our understanding.  Sometimes they reveal the imagination of another person.  Other times they veil the imagination of another person.  Either way, my point in all this – and perhaps you have caught it by now, or maybe you forgot it by now – but my point in all this is…well, it is that of a three year old being unknowing and unreserved enough to halt my hurriedness and aggravation with a simple “Daddy, up?”  A statement that only makes sense with hands lifted up.  And then, eventually as I pondered long, to turn my hurriedness toward God and His Word in a posture of worship.  And of course by worship I mean that which pours forth unceasingly from a heart enlivened by the Spirit of God himself; the “Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba!  Father!’”  A statement, by the way, that most certainly makes the most sense – no matter in seasons of desperation or need or repentance or adoration or praise or quiet sacrifice – a statement that makes the most sense with hands lifted up.