Music & The Spoken Word

The Making of Music and the Spoken Word

Message from program 3571: 

     After World War II a statue of Christ that was damaged in the fighting was painstakingly restored—except for its hands, which could not be repaired. Instead of crafting new hands, the addition of this powerful phrase gave the statue new meaning: “Christ has no hands but ours.” While earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal, it is our opportunity to lift and bless the lives of others. Acting in harmony with the best we know, we can become the hands of heaven.

Mother Teresa became the hands of heaven in the slums of Calcutta. She described her efforts, which brought life and hope to thousands, in these words: “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”¹

Albert Schweitzer’s hands built a hospital in Africa, where he spent 50 years caring for the needs of strangers who became his friends—all because he believed “the purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”²

We need not travel to India or Africa to find opportunities to be heaven’s hands. If our hearts are filled with compassion, mercy, and love for others, we will daily discover that we are surrounded by those who need our help. If our hands are willing^, they can do heaven’s work in ways both great and small.

English novelist Mary Ann Evans once questioned, “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” Under her pen name of George Eliot, she wrote: “May I reach that purest heaven [to] be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.”³

As we seek to become the hands of heaven in the lives of others, our Father in Heaven will give us the strength and inspiration necessary to do His will on earth. For God will continue to accomplish heaven’s great work through willing human hands. 

¹Mother Teresa, Great Quotes From Great Leaders, ed. Peggy Anderson (Lombard, IL: Celebrating Excellence in Publishing, 1990), p. 101.

²Albert Schweitzer, ibid., p. 32.

³George Eliot, “The Invisible Choir,” as found in The Book of Virtues, comp. William J. Bennett (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 182.

More research on the statue of Christ