But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your gift may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward! But whenever you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. Mathew 6:3-6 (NET)

When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it-quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out. "And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. Mathew 6:3-6 (TMB)

There are many, many different uses of the word hand: Possessing power, a physical part of the body, applause, position or form (e.g. clock face), workmanship or worker, set of cards, measurement, to pick something up, take in a sail (Apple Online Dictionary). But in the above verse Jesus is talking about how one should perform one’s work, in secret, with no fanfare, without expectation of human notice or reward.

Often, Christ Jesus would pull someone up or touch them with one hand when he healed them.

 

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Seeing that the crowd was forming fast, Jesus gave the vile spirit its marching orders: "Dumb and deaf spirit, I command you-Out of him, and stay out!" Screaming, and with much thrashing about, it left. The boy was pale as a corpse, so people started saying, "He’s dead." But Jesus, taking his hand, raised him. The boy stood up. After arriving back home, his disciples cornered Jesus and asked, "Why couldn’t we throw the demon out?" He answered, "There is no way to get rid of this kind of demon except by prayer." 

Mark 9:25-29 (TMB)

Everyone was crying and carrying on over her. Jesus said, "Don’t cry. She didn’t die; she’s sleeping." They laughed at him. They knew she was dead. Then Jesus, gripping her hand, called, "My dear child, get up." She was up in an instant, up and breathing again! He told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were ecstatic, but Jesus warned them to keep quiet. "Don’t tell a soul what happened in this room.” 

Luke 8:52-56 (TMB)

He took the blind man by the hand and brought him outside of the village. Then he spit on his eyes, placed his hands on his eyes and asked, “Do you see anything?” Regaining his sight he said, “I see people, but they look like trees walking.” Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again. And he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.” 

Mark 8:23-26 (NET)

Now when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying down, sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her. Then she got up and began to serve them. 

Mathew 8:14-15 (NET)

He was barely inside when a woman who had a disturbed daughter heard where he was. She came and knelt at his feet, begging for help. The woman was Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth. She asked him to cure her daughter. He said, "Stand in line and take your turn. The children get fed first. If there’s any left over, the dogs get it." She said, "Of course, Master. But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children?" Jesus was impressed. "You’re right! On your way! Your daughter is no longer disturbed. The demonic affliction is gone." She went home and found her daughter relaxed on the bed, the torment gone for good. Mark 7:25-30 (TMB)

A WebMD.com article by Andrea Cooper titled “The Healing Power of Touch” (April 11, 2008) discussed healing touch therapies and described four (4) different types: Body psychotherapy, massage therapy, physical therapy, and osteopathic manipulative treatment. These and other alternative therapies were introduced to mainline White, Western medicine in the 1970s; they were not new to cultures of color in the United States and around the world. The fact that they are now commonplace in the palette of treatment options shows that they have been incorporated into mainstream culture. But is it the same as the healing that The Christ did? “Therapy” isn’t synonymous with “cure,” although it sometimes leads to it. Many times, therapy gives relief, but what Christ Jesus emphatically did was cure people. If for no other fact that one’s skin is the largest organ in the body, it should be obvious that touch is powerful. Diana Ross’ simple song, “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand” is a popular testament to that fact.

Research on the potential power of human touch is substantive and somewhat compelling.

Many TH therapies are used in the American health care system, with practitioners dispensing treatments in such modalities as Therapeutic Touch (TT), Healing Touch, Reiki, Polarity Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and qigong. 7,10 One example is TT, a TH modality developed in the early 1970s by D. Kunz and D. Krieger, that is currently used by tens of thousands of nurses in the United States.11 The practitioner typically begins by eliciting a calm “centered” attitude in the patient. He/she then sweeps his/her hands at a distance of 1–2 inches from the body and tells the patient he/she is receiving a powerful energetic touch. Even though the practitioners’ hands are kept at a distance, patients frequently describe a “flowing feeling” near where they envision the practitioner’s hands to be. Another TH therapy, Reiki, parallels TT in many respects.
Kerr, C. E., Wasserman, R. H., & Moore, C. I. (2007). Cortical Dynamics As A Therapeutic Mechanism for Touch Healing. Journal Of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 13(1), 59-66. doi:10.1089/acm.2006.5245.

Some of us were blessed to be at Allen Temple before Reverend Myrtle Griffin became the Minister of Healing. For years before she became a Minister, Myrtle Griffin would sit at bedsides of seriously, and sometimes terminally, ill patients. She also would take off her shoes before she stepped on the ground at the altar in church and anoint people with oil on their heads: That is when Allen Temple adopted the practice and she was ridiculed by many in the church. But Senior Pastor J. Alfred Smith, Sr. knew better and gave Reverend Griffin free rein. Soon she was ministering full-time without pay driving all over the Bay Area to sit and pray with and for anyone who asked. Her knees reflected the intensity of her ministry: They were often bruised and marked. She told me that she often would kneel at the bedside in homes and hospital rooms of patients, many who were too ill to notice she was there, all night sometimes for twelve continuous hours. What a cost to herself and her family, but she never denied anyone if she was physically able. One prays that there are hundreds if not thousands who know God through her witness of uncompromising service. Many were healed by God and she told me that sometimes healing came in the form of death of the body.

But of all the amazing things she shared, one of the most amazing was that after she finished praying for the ill, she would dip her hands in cold water: She said this prevented her from contracting many of the grave illnesses she was praying to God to heal. But Reverend Griffin still manifested many physical ills that I believe came from her “standing in the gap” for the many she prayed for: Metastasized cancer and bouts of shingles, among them. It became a regular occurrence for people, congregants and clergy alike, to show up unannounced in church services to attest to miraculous healings that their physicians acknowledged could not be explained medically because Myrtle Griffin prayed for them, hours and hours of intercessory petition on her knees. And her hands…for a small beautiful, otherwise dainty woman, I remember that Reverend Griffin had large hands, almost workman-like. She has gone Home to God now for about twelve years and it is not surprising to me that we lost her a little over two years after her dearest and best friend, Mrs. Mary Jane Perry Morris went Home, another woman gifted by God to heal but this time through word and counsel. God used Myrtle Griffin for the body and Mary Jane Perry Morris for the soul: A once-in-a-lifetime Christly duet. Both were adamant and unceasing in attributing it all to God through Christ Jesus, all of it. Allen Temple has been blessed.

Healing by touch is still considered controversial and it seems it may be more palliative than anything else. In a meta-analysis review of 66 clinical studies, these authors suggest the same.

Studies overall are of medium quality, and generally meet minimum standards for validity of inferences. Biofield therapies show strong evidence for reducing pain intensity in pain populations, and moderate evidence for reducing pain intensity hospitalized and cancer populations. There is moderate evidence for decreasing negative behavioral symptoms in dementia and moderate evidence for decreasing anxiety for hospitalized populations. There is equivocal evidence for biofield therapies' effects on fatigue and quality of life for cancer patients, as well as for comprehensive pain outcomes and affect in pain patients, and f or decreasing anxiety in cardiovascular patients.
Jain, S., & Mills, P. J. (2010). Biofield Therapies: Helpful or Full of Hype? A Best Evidence Synthesis. International Journal Of Behavioral Medicine (17), 1-16. doi:10.1007/s12529-009-9062-4

So, we can bring relief and comfort to those in pain and distress through healing touch therapies. The kind of miraculous healings that The Nazarene did and that God did through intercessory prayer of a Myrtle Griffin or a Mary Jane Perry Morris is a different kind of touch. How does one prepare to be a steward of that kind of work?

• It seems that one is chosen for it, just as one is chosen for anything that we know we were born to do. Neither Reverend Griffin or Mrs. Mary Jane Perry Morris were on salary at Allen Temple for the monumental work they did in the lives of thousands over the years. They said over and over that they didn’t do it for the church, although they loved Allen Temple, but for God, for the Jesus Who loved them and loved us. Another fearless follower of The Christ and another “M” (I nicknamed them “The Allen Temple Triumvirate” and Senior Pastor J. Alfred Smith, Sr.’s “Three-Legged Stool” foundation) was Reverend Dr. Malvina Stephens who was the first African-American woman Preacher ordained by the Senior Pastor Smith, Sr. in the Bay Area at the time and established the Prison Ministry that still serves as a model for other churches nationally.
• It is also true that one is prepared through prayer for it. “He said to them, ‘This kind [demon] can come out only through prayer’” (Mark 9:29 NRSV). The Nazarene was constantly stealing away to pray all night by Himself, walking alone on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, escaping by boat from the crowds for time in prayer.

“But the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped out, since there was a crowd in that place.” John 5:13 (NET)

 

With the crowd dispersed, he climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night.
Mathew 14:23 (TMB)

 

Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
Mathew 14:13 (NET)

Myrtle Griffin, Mary J. P. Morris, and Malvina Stephens had florid and constant prayer lives. Mary Jane was known to work for hours in research and prayer, preparing to teach her weekly Sunday School class of over 100 students. Then, she would often stay up all night on the phone with many who called her for counsel. She never turned anyone down and went deaf in one ear because she was on the phone, listening to and talking people out of addictions and death. She also met with people, especially young adults, any and everywhere if they wished and counseled with them ad nauseam. Reverend Stephens into her 80s was still going to prisons up and down the State of California, leading her multiple Prison Ministry Teams of men and women. There are thousands of men and women who waited, locked up, sometimes hopelessly and for life, for this tiny Woman Warrior who fearlessly went where grown men didn’t dare to come tell them about a God who they thought forgot about them. When these three women of God died, people came or sent condolences and testimony from around the world to their funerals.

• Finally, one must be willing to sacrifice. We know what final sacrifice Christ Jesus made and His model proved to be the one that Mary Jane Perry Morris, Myrtle Griffin, and Malvina Stephens followed. Only their families and God know the depth of sacrifices that these women made in the name of The Christ. We owe them our eternal gratitude. But if you talked to any one of them separately over the years, one thing came through with resounding clarity: It was their faith and trust in the power of God through Christ Jesus that enabled them to withstand the early isolation, ridicule, and sacrifice. They said that they stayed in prayer. And we can imagine that it was no “crystal stair.”

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
www.tnellen.com/cybereng/matoson.html

The Nazarene modeled for us what it takes for the handiwork that we say we want to do for God: Chosen for your work, prepared through prayer, and sacrifice.

• Being chosen means knowing what you are gifted to do, not just sitting and waiting for the gift to be dropped on you. You learn what it is by serving. Discernment of gifts is not a mystical experience but a “sweat equity.” You do and then you know.
• Preparing through prayer is spending a lot of time querying God…about any and everything, just as you might talk to a close, dear friend about anything. That, too, is prayer: S/He just doesn’t have skin on… but He once did.
• Finally, sacrifice is not something you order or bemoan or dread or save up for…it just happens, and it isn’t calculable.

If you are hand picked to do work for God, you’re going to end up talking to Him/Her about it a lot anyway. And before you know it, you find yourself spending time on the assignment because you can’t do anything else.

That’s not a sacrifice.
That’s a gift.
You’ve not given up anything.
You’ve been given.

Grandma's hands clapped in church on Sunday morning.
Grandma's hands played the tambourine so well.
Grandma's hands used to issue out a warning,
She'd say, “Billy don't you run so fast,
Might fall on a piece of glass,
Might be snake there in that grass,”
Grandma's hands

Grandma's hands sooth the local unwed mother
Grandma's hands used to ache sometimes and swell
Grandma's hands used to lift her face and tell her,
She'd say, “Baby Grandma understands,
That you really loved that man,
Put yourself in Jesus' hands.”
Grandma's Hands

Grandma's hands used to hand me piece of candy.
Grandma's hands picked me up each time I fell.
Grandma's hands, boy they really came in handy
She'd say, “ Mattie don't you whip that boy.
What you want to spank him for?
He didn't drop no apple core,”
But I don't have Grandma anymore,
If I get to heaven I'll look for
Grandma's hands.
Um,mm,mm.

“Grandma’s Hands” by Bill Withers 1971
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billwithers/grandmashands151557.html

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Hands in Prayer