The title of this article comes from one of my favorite songs written and sung by Answers in Genesis dinosaur sculptor Buddy Davis. I want to bring to your attention today the hands referenced in the song’s title. On this Christmas Day, I wanted visitors to this website to ponder the following:
  • Jesus Christ created the universe and all life (Colossians 1: All things were created by and for Jesus Christ). He created the first man, Adam.

    God’s Word in Isaiah 64:8 likens God to a potter and humans to the clay that the potter worked on: “But now, O LORD, You [are] our Father; We [are] the clay, and You our potter; And all we [are] the work of Your hand.”

    As He formed Adam’s hands, He knew that one day He Himself would take on human flesh with hands like these—and that these hands would be pierced when He was nailed on a cross for our sins. As we read in Revelation 13:8, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

  • Because of sin (when Adam rebelled against God’s Word and took the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden), Adam and all his descendants were separated from God—and would, because of sin, be separated from God in eternal judgment.

    The “clay pot” God made was now marred—it was cracked and broken because of sin.

  • However, our brokenness is not the end. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

    It was prophesied in Isaiah 53:5: “But He [was] wounded for our transgressions, [He was] bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace [was] upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”

    And in Psalm 22:16: “For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet.”

  • When Jesus was nailed on the Cross, in the agony of that terrible situation, and as He took upon Him the punishment for our sin, we can picture it this way: those pierced hands, bleeding and hurting, were tenderly working with the broken, marred clay pot of our life to make us perfect again in Christ.

Oh, how I pray that people would understand the true meaning of the babe in a manger—the truth of the wonderful saving gospel—the loving Potter who paid the price to restore the broken and marred clay pots that we are. I pray that all of you reading this have received the free gift of the gospel—that’s what the AiG ministry is all about.

I have included two of AiG cartoonist Dan Lietha’s cartoons that have a real Christmas message for us.

Have a blessed Christmas. As you receive your gifts from loved ones, thank God for the greatest gift of all: the gift from the Potter’s hand, the gift of salvation in Christ.