Welcome to the day's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Arthur Jackson, and I've titled today's reading, Save Hands.

Like the unraveling of a rope, the threads of Doug Murky's life were breaking one by one.

He notes,

My mother had lost her prolonged battle with cancer.

A long-term romantic relationship was failing.

My finances were depleted.

My vocation was foggy.

The emotional and spiritual darkness around me and within me was deep and debilitating and seemingly impenetrable, the pastor and sculptor wrote.

These collective events combined with living in a cramped attic became the setting from which his sculpture, the hiding place, emerged.

It depicts Christ's strong, nail-scarred hands openly cut together as a place of safety.

Doug explained the design of his artwork this way.

The sculpture is Christ's invitation to hide in him.

In Psalm 32, David wrote as one who had found the ultimate safe

place, God himself. He offers us forgiveness from our sin and encourages us to offer prayer

in the midst of tumult. In verse 7, the psalmist declares his trust in God. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from

trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. When trouble shows up, where do you turn?

How good it is to know that when the fragile cords of our earthly existence begin to unravel,

we can run to the God who has provided eternal safety

through the forgiving work of Jesus.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Psalm 32.

Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven,

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