Daily Devotion 02 Sept 2025

The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:11

READING: John 13:1-17

In about 1508, a German artist, Albrecht Dürer, did a drawing in preparation for a larger work. This image of Praying Hands is today the most widely reproduced depiction of prayer in the Western world.

Albrecht Dürer was a great artist, and created many vastly intricate and more impressive works, but it is those well-worn hands that have inspired so many people over the years. Stories have circulated about whose hands those were, but in fact we do not know. Something about those hands, obviously hands which have worked hard and suffered wear and tear, touches out hearts. Perhaps they are beautiful because they are the hands of a beautiful spirit. Somehow they speak to us of many things.

While Dürer was a successful and talented artist, very likely the owner of the hands which he drew was a simple man, certainly he is anonymous to history. But without him, the artist would not have been able to create that picture.

Life doesn’t always go according to our plans, but God will always use us. Can we turn our hands from a high dream to a humbler task, and still keep them beautiful?

Jesus did. In John 13:3-5 we read of Jesus at the Last Supper – “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal … and wrapped a towel around his waist … and began to wash his disciples’ feet”.

Jesus, because He was conscious of His supreme power, and of His place within the divine glory of the Godhead, chose to humble himself in humblest service, of bending down and washing the dusty feet of his guests.

Our hands might never paint a great picture, like Albrecht Dürer, but if we offer our hands in humble service to the world, through the guidance of God, then the action of our hands will speak to the hearts of those we meet, and, who knows, might even have an extraordinary effect on the world.

God is counting on us. Many years ago, an old saint prayed; ‘All that Thou dost ask of us, dear Lord, is that we lend Thee a hand’.