The Thumbprint of God

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      A little piece of clay is in my desk drawer all of the time. I don’t know why I keep it, but I do. I found it in a little junk store many years ago. The proprietor of the store had collected tens of thousands of items from all over the world that were of no real value as a whole. A gear from a hospital bed, a wrench from a T-Model Ford, a bolt of cloth with sunflowers: all might be items a shopper could find while meandering through the non-distinct aisles, stepping over or walking around items that had fallen over. As a whole, this store’s merchandise was just a large collection of junk.
      However, if someone were looking for a T-Model Ford wrench or some sunflower cloth for a snazzy pair of pants, well this storehouse of odd treasures would be the right place to explore. (I doubt whether that hospital bed gear ever sold, since I am sure it lacked any suitable suitors.)
      I do not believe the proprietor paid very much for the collection of odds and ends. I have always believed these things were acquired at the end of an auction sale where the expensive items were sold individually for large sums of money. However, once the nice things were gone, the auctioneer, a bit raspy from the vicious bidding, would look at the motley collection and say, “Who will give me a bid on this box of leftovers?” I believe our junk shop proprietor was always around when these bids were offered. Probably, as the purchasers of the expensive items were exiting the bidding parlor with their treasures, our proprietor was attentive to offer a dollar for that old box of junk. I believe he purchased many, many boxes of such junk, which he transported to his home and then stored in huge piles around his property.
      Now, by the time I am shopping, the items have been brought out of their hiding places and are being displayed for sale to anyone who will make an offer. The thousands of “dollar boxes” are becoming hundreds of dollars per month to sweeten the proprietor’s retirement. Lucky, the proprietor’s dog probably also benefits with some special bones or extra treats along the way.
      As I browse, (one of my favorite activities), through the mountains and rows of items, I find little of interest. How bothersome to navigate through all of this vast collection and to find nothing of value to purchase. Surely there must be something to purchase. Guilt riddles me as I contemplate the affront of looking at all of the stuff and not offering a good affirmation to the proprietor with a purchase of anything. It would be a social disgrace and embarrassment to walk through any such repository and to not make a purchase. It would be as if you were telling the proprietor that his stuff was not worth a purchase. To enter, look, meander, or browse and to leave without a purchase would be a snub, an indignity, and an insolent act. Your grandmother would shake the mold off the tomb stone to even imagine that a scion of her lineage could act “suchly.”
      So, to keep what little decency remained in our family, I walked by a bowl filled with little trinkets, and I selected a little lump of clay. With hardly a glance, I offered a dollar for the oddity; he agreed with the overture, and the deal was set with the simple exchange of currency. I exited, being pleased to have salvaged the remnant of family seemliness, proving once again that, poor as we may have been, we did not join with the other poor who enjoy a lesser quantity of decencies and necessaries.
      Only as I exited into the sunlight was I more able to closely look at the soft-fired clay to find that I had actually bought a simple relief sculpture, the size of a nickel, created by an artisan whom I believe to have been an Aztec priest from 4,000 years ago, ... maybe. (Who is to say it was not?) The simple sculpture is of a head-dressed female with tiny holes poked where the nose, ears, and eyes are customarily found.
      However, the remarkable portion of this find was not on the relief-sculptured side but, rather, was on the thumb-pressed back side, for it was there that I found the actual unique thumbprint of the ancient sculptor. In my hand was not only a piece of purposeful artwork but also a personal and biological identification of the creator. I was holding the imprint of a child of God, who I would never meet, an ancestral fellow of sorts, who had passed along a lineage of art and heritage. In my hand I now held a piece of simple creativity that exhibited a mysterious link of humanity in the past, (from my perspective), with an unlikely and unimagined purchaser (from the perspective of the ancient priest). While holding this artifact I gained the sense of forever being tied to the unknown and unnamed creator with the clay-stained thumb. I doubt whether the artisan on the other end would have imagined me, the one with the secure and guarded decency.
      To this day, as I come across this relic harbored in my drawer, while looking for a paper clip, pair of scissors, or note card, I stop and take a minute, remembering that I, too, am the mysterious proof of a creator God who took the dirt of the earth for the elements, the divine spittle for the unction, to create me in an image that I could never imagine or fathom. The thumbprint of God is all over me and all over all of God’s creation. We are the evidence of a plan, a past, and a careful ordering. Just as we bear the thumbprint of God, God bears the remnant stains of our creation material. God is implicated with the stained hands that bear witness to the act of our creation.
      In my wildest dreams I do not believe I could imagine God. But I am the created evidence that God did and can imagine me. I am wonderfully made but commonly ordered to serve, worship, thrive, surrender, and humbly stand as a witness of the sacred act of a present God.
      From an ordered creation I am made, from a personal price upon a cross I am bought, and from a glorious promise I am marked as suitable and presentable to the feted Kingdom of God. We are evidence not only of an ancient beginning but also of an incarnate present and a promised sacred future.


Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com