Hands like His

Today I went to the Salt Lake Temple with Ann. If there is anything to be remembered, it is the spirit of the pioneers that could be felt in that building. Sitting there it didn’t feel like there could possibly be anything much more important than sitting in that room, full of heritage, imagining those people… people like Brigham Young who had walked through those halls and had baptized the saints in the same font I was about to climb down into.

For whatever reason, the whole time I was there, I couldn’t stop thinking about our dear friend, Vanessa. For those of you who don’t know Vanessa… she was blind. Vanessa was one of the sweetest people you would ever have met and the most patient. She never let being blind inhibit her from doing anything she wanted to do. She died a few months ago. Every time we went to a temple with Vanessa, someone would take her by the elbow and guide her by the walls so she could feel the designs in the woodwork and admire the beauty of the temple through the feeling in her hands as someone described them to her to the best of their ability. I remember her being sad when we went to the San Antonio temple, because San Antonio’s beauty is in the art work and in the stained glass windows and not in the woodwork. It was hard for her to appreciate the beauty of that temple when she was used to the Houston temple. But she always kept in mind that she was in the Lord’s house, and that made it beautiful.

Salt Lake City Temple was very simple inside. Most of the woodwork was simple. But the parts that had designs were beautiful and ornate. Imagining some pioneer carpenter making them by hand was awe inspiring and added to the feeling of sacredness to the room. I also spent a lot of time admiring the oxen. Their faces and their eyes showed a sense of deep concern. I felt like their eyes were communicating the tragedy that so few people come to the temple… the tragedy that so many souls out there have yet to have that saving ordinance of baptism and be sealed to their families. Their eyes showed a Christ like love.

The whole time Ann and I sat in the baptismal room I thought of Vanessa and how she would have seen that room. After I felt like I had absorbed the room as much as I could visually, I closed my eyes and felt everything I could with my hands without trying to be obvious about it. It made me sad that Vanessa would not have been able to feel those oxen, as I was not able. How would someone have described the emotions in the eyes of those figures? Most things were simple as I said… but there was something very different about cutting off the perspective of eye sight and feeling things with my hands. I felt like the age of the building was seeping through my hands and telling me things my eyes could not. I still felt the spirit of the room, even when my eyes were closed. I knew Vanessa would have been able to feel the spirit in that room and feel its history as I was able, and I just knew she would have loved it. With all her heart.

I thought a lot about hands. I don’t think we think enough about hands. Hands are so sensitive and can feel so much. They can also do so much. Sitting in the temple, thinking of how Vanessa used her hands to see and not just feel, I thought to myself, that Vanessa probably understood hands so much better than anyone else. If we let him, the Lord’s hands can be working constantly in our lives, helping us to grow closer to him. I thought about our hands, and how like most seeing people, we don’t appreciate our hands as much as the blind. Our eyes blind us in a sense, if that makes any sense. If we let the spirit guide our hands, our actions… we too can grow sensitive like the blind when they read brail. We can act as the Lord’s hands in the lives of those around us, sensitive to their needs we can serve the Lord as we serve them. It’s a special part of the gift we have in being on this earth.