It’s all in hand

Sometimes life is an uphill struggle and we need assurance that it will be okay in the end, even if it is not okay now. Wouldn’t it be a great feeling to be able to say ‘It’s all in hand’?

‘In hand’ has a metaphorical rather than a literal meaning. ‘It’s all in hand’ means that the situation, topic or problem that you are dealing with at the moment is under control so there is no need to lose sleep over it.

A number of years ago I was going through a difficult time and it felt like my life was falling apart. I felt so alone in my situation and so I prayed for help. I didn’t go to church at the time and didn’t know much about God so didn’t really know if God would hear my cry for help. We were living in Peterborough at the time and I did not have any close friends to be able to turn to.

Life continued and decisions were made and then a couple of months later I met a lady at one of my children’s nursery school. We agreed to have coffee at my house and I asked her what she would usually be doing now. She told me she would be having a cup of tea, reading her Bible and praying. I felt a warmth in my heart and shared with her how I had prayed a couple of months before and I shared with her what my problem had been. I believe that God had answered my prayer for help and brought this friend into my life to help me learn more about Him and His love for me. My friend sang in the band at her church and as I also love to sing, I agreed to go to church that Sunday to hear her in the band. As soon as I walked into her church, I received such a loving warm welcome and listening to the music I felt like I had gone home. I had never felt like that before. I have attended Christenings and Weddings in churches before but never felt like that.

My friend continued to visit me each week and I learnt more and more about what is means to be a Christian. How God sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross so that we could one day live with Him in eternity. I made a decision to give my life to Jesus in May 1994 and was baptised in Sept 1994.

Since becoming a Christian my life hasn’t been a bed of roses. I have made many decisions that in hindsight I may have chosen a different path, but I have always known that God loves me and will never leave me.

I see praying as talking to God and so over the years I have practiced talking to God by sharing my thoughts and feelings. In doing so I try to be attentive to what He teaches me through all sorts of avenues such as music, reading, listening to others, creation, the Bible and many other aspects of daily life.

I find that praying about things as they occur helps me to stay connected to God and because I have shared my thanks, thoughts and worries with God I can trust that ‘It’s all in hand’.

I remember when my children were very young and they were all under the age of 5 at the time. We had arrived at the health centre and the rain was bouncing off the pavement. We were sat in the car park and I was trying to pluck up courage to make the journey from the car to the entrance. How would I manage to get us in without us all getting drenched? I asked my children to close their eyes and said we will pray and ask God to help us to get to the entrance safely. We prayed and then waited a few moments and slowly the rain slowed down and then stopped. The look of amazement on my children’s faces was priceless. We made it into the health centre without a single drop of rain on us!

I have also prayed for my children sometimes using the word BLESS. This helps me to focus on specific areas of need at the time. The letters of the word BLESS stand for:

B (Bodily needs), L (Love needs), E (Emotional needs), S (Social needs) and S (Spiritual needs).

I found it helpful to record the date and what was prayed for each child and then very encouraging to look back and see how those prayers have been answered.

If we compare praying to taking vitamin pills, we wouldn’t take the whole bottle of pills at once to help us. We would take one per day to take care of our bodies to avoid us becoming ill in the future and so to the best of our ability we can say ‘It’s all in hand’. For me it is the same with prayer. I try to pray every day and keep communicating with God so that I can trust that if I have prayed about it then I have done my best and can say that ‘It’s all in hand’.

There are a number of verses in the Bible that describe God holding us in the palm of His hand.

John 10:28

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

The term ‘In my hand’ has the straightforward, literal meaning that something is physically inside my hand, that I am holding something.

So in conclusion when we put our faith in Jesus Christ and believe that he died for us on the cross, we can trust that we are in the palm of God’s hand and when we pray we can believe that ‘It’s all in hand’ so that even if it is not okay, it is okay because of the promise we have of eternal life.