“You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.” (John 13:13-16, N.K.J.V.)

The story is told of a certain European town in which there was a beautiful statue of Jesus. The hands of the statue reached out, and the inscription read, “Come unto me.” The statue was a beautiful reminder of the fact that Christ’s arms are always outstretched to minister to those in need.

Then came World War II, during which the town was bombed and the statue left destroyed in the aftermath. Following the war, the townspeople hired the statue’s sculptor to replace it with one just like it. The man worked hard and the work went well, but when he came to the statue’s defining feature, its outstretched hands, he decided to do something different. Covertly, however, he kept his decision a secret until the day of the unveiling.

When that day came the townspeople, with great excitement, gathered around the covered statue. Their excitement was quickly replaced with shock, though, when the sculptor unveiled the new statue. What the people saw was a Jesus who had arms but no hands. Then, as the people stood there in stunned disbelief, the sculptor unveiled the inscription on the statue’s base. It read: “Who will be My hands today?”

Actually, that’s a question that Jesus could ask every day, isn’t it? So, Christian, will you be His hands today? The reality is that somebody out there needs for you to be “Jesus” to them, and you might just be the only “Jesus” that person encounters today.