Jesus' Hands

“I guess the main thing I’ve learned is that Jesus doesn’t always ‘fix things’…He just holds you, instead.”

—Jim Grier

That’s a powerful statement, especially in light of what Jim Grier has been walking through over the last few years. Jim is one of the key leaders and visionaries for The Sentinel Group—a band of Flatirons men reaching out to divorced and single fathers.

I can’t (and won’t) get into all the gory details. Suffice it to say that Jim Grier has been through one of the nastiest child support/custody battles I’ve ever come across. The settlement and plea bargain with his ex-wife in California ended with Jim doing a 90 day sentence here in Colorado at the Weld County jail—a sentence that lasted from October 2015 to January 2016.

Listening to Jim share his story over coffee this morning was equally heart-breaking and encouraging. He owns his mistakes in this sordid journey, but I couldn’t help but still see God’s fingerprints all over Jim’s mess—seeing God’s redemptive hand, making things ”good” (Romans 8:28).

As Jim told me a few of the stories from his incarceration in Weld County, I could see so many “God moments” in the midst of it all; counseling and guiding multiple men in jail…helping a fellow inmate reduce his sentence (failure to do court-mandated divorce counseling) by leading him through The Sentinel Group’s divorce recovery material…and even leading a Satanist to a saving faith in Jesus as his savior.

Simply, God moments.

But I guess the thing that stood out to me the most at the East Simpson Coffee Shop this morning was Jim’s constant use of the words, “held in Jesus’ hands”…and what that looked like for him. Jesus’ hands looked like the men of his Sentinel Group:

Men who rallied around Jim by regularly visiting the jail…

Men who took turns caring for Jim’s wife Mary, and their kids, in his absence…

Men who lived out what their teaching and encouraging through The Sentinel Group…

Men who truly “smoked what they are selling.”

That’s what Jesus’ hands looked like.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

The Body of Christ is made up of many parts…and Jim Grier was lovingly held in Jesus’ hands. And in the middle of your world falling apart…can there be a safer place?

—Dan