Cradled in the Hand of God

Today I remember God cradles me in perfect forgiveness.

For some reason I was thinking of this nun I taught next to for several years twenty years ago, Sister Claudine. She was in her seventies at the time, but still she enthusiastically nutured a class of eighth grade students at this little Catholic school where I found myself working after I dropped my career as a lawyer.

Sister Claudine was the embodiment of Grace; she had this aura of kindness about her no matter what happened. She never complained about being tired, but I suspect she had to keep working because as a nun she didn't want to burden her sisterhood by retiring.

Anyways, I was in my mid-twenties, greener than green, with a class full of seventh grade English students when the Rodney King riots broke. We were all scared, the riots came very close to our school, and for some reason I found myself in her classroom that evening, and I told her was afraid to go home.

Sister Claudine took out this sculpture of a hand, the size of a real hand, and told me she kept it in her classroom as a reminder that all of us, are always in God's hand. I was instantly comforted; I even felt this sense of being cradled, held secure, despite any craziness that might be happening around me. I think of that hand often when I am nervous or uncertain about anything.

Today I remind myself I sit in the hand of God.