The Healer

oil, 11x14

We are so far removed from death in our culture. We hire others to handle the "dirty work" of preparing the bodies of our loved ones for the grave. In other times and places, this act was the final act of love, the final opportunity to give back to one beloved in life.

As Christ's followers prepared His body for burial, they came to His hands, bruised and bloodied beyond recognition. Those hands that once healed the sick and caused the blind to see had reached out in one final gesture of love to a mocking world and now lay still in death. The hands that formed Adam from the clay, now battered by His own creation.

We like to think at Christmastime of Mary kissing her baby boy and kissing the face of God, but what was it really like the day God died?