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Stretch Out Your Withered Hand
Mark 3: 1-6
Matthew 12: 9- 15 : Luke 6::6-11
Stretch out your hand, so that you may be healed,
So withered, shrunken, helpless is your hand,
That should be strong productive and well steeled
A hand secure, but nimble, deft and competent.
Come forth and stand up!, for the pharisees,
Perhaps might feel some pity with your fate,
Or feel at least some form of sympathy,
But in their eyes' is only spite and hate.
But Jesus with great piity spoke again::
"What waste,- so useless is a palsied hand,
Stretch our your hand! stand up, come forward man!
Fear not amidst a hostile crowd to stand.
The Sabbath is for man, - for man to rest,
But who can rest with sharp enduringt pain?
Then work to assuage the pain is blessed,
While legalistic zeal is null and vain.
.
Come forward then and stretch out wide your hand,;
Stretch! stretch! - and strike the untapped mine,
That needs to be explored and to expand
To get the treasures that in shafts recline.
Behold dear friend this mine is yet untapped
Go drum and knock upon this untapped mine,
Where dormant aptitudes like jewels slept
But now awake to brightly gleam and shine.
Stretch forth your hand! - so you may apprehend,
And seize the riches I will put in it,
My grace and love for men are without end,
And I bestow it oft unmerited.
Stretch out your hand and come up to the fore,
For I will with abundance give and fill,-
And be not shy dear friend to ask for more,
And I will fill it's cup to overspill.
Stretch out you hand!, shrunk in paralysis,
Unprofitable is a shrivelled hand,
Come! - stretch it forth! - heed not the pharisees,
Strettch! Stretch - your calling to attend. !
Stretch out your hand ! - your palsied limb, stretch! stretch!
Be healed to ply again your cherished trade,
To chisel, carve, ingrain, engrave and etch, *
On wood, granite, or stone nephriter or jade.
Stretch out your hand, stretch out to seize
these dormant gifts I did on you bestow,
And make them grow and ask for an increase,
Until the flood will surge and overflow.
Praise to the Lord, and praise to Jesus Christ
Who this so wilted useless hand restored,
O happy hand, once limp and paralyzed,
Creating works of art to praise the Lord.
* the man was a Stone Mason and Engraver artist as per Legenda Aurea
