Lonnie sat at the bar, his face and hands blackened with soot and grease. His drink was Kessler (an American blend whiskey) and coke, in a short glass, so that the ratio of Kessler to Coke was more 50/50 than it was in a highball which would have been more like 30/70. At last call, Lonnie held up three fingers – he wanted 3 of them that he could down in the 15 minutes between last call and closing time. Lonnie was a nice guy, he didn’t cause any problems and he had a pretty good sense of humor, but there was a sadness to Lonnie, a sadness that you saw on his right hand. 
“Ever look at Lonnie’s right hand?” the bar owner, Rob, asked me one time when he was helping me shut the place down.
“No, why?”
“If you do, you’ll notice there’s a wedding ring on that hand. It’s his wedding ring, but he wears it on his right hand. Lonnie used to be quite the farmer, a real up and coming guy. He was popular in high school and in town, ended up marrying his high school sweetheart, a real pretty girl,” continued Rob, owner of the Well, “but one day he comes home from the field and he finds her in his bed, with another man.”
I think I scoffed at first. Surely nobody’s life sounds this much like a country song. But Rob insisted, and Rob had been around a while, and being an old bartender he knew more about people’s lives than their priests knew. The next night I looked, and sure enough, there was a gold band encircling the ring finger on Lonnie’s right hand.
I never brought it up, and Lonnie never volunteered anything. I never asked what he thought that talisman would protect him from. Perhaps from ever giving his heart away again. Perhaps from the pain of the moment, as an inoculation of sorts – if he kept the anger and the sorrow in front of him on that ring, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to deal with it all at once, but could parcel it out. Sometimes it is simply tragically nonsensical, what we do in the face of our hurts.
The lesson of Lonnie’s right hand ring is one that many of us claim to have learned already, to let go of the hurts in our lives so that we can heal. But in my experience as both a bartender and preacher have taught me that many of us are still wearing right hand rings. We are still obsessing over the failures, pains, and misfortunes of life – carrying them in the front of our mind and agitating the wounds.
This is where Jesus comes in. Most of the time we call His action in our lives “forgiveness,” but it is much greater than simply forgiveness. It is restoration. He takes us by the hand and slips the gold band off our right hand, looks at it, and with us acknowledges the hurt. He rubs the spot left on our finger, feeling how it has indented our finger, and He mourns the pain. And then He places our gold ring in a box, and shuts the lid. Not only that, but He opens up the cash register and pays us for the ring, giving us His own righteousness in return for our hurt.
I hope that one day, Lonnie slid that ring off his finger, but I am convinced that if Lonnie dies with that ring on His finger – when Jesus comes, He will slide it off Lonnie’s finger before letting him gain entrance to the Resurrection. My hope for you is that Jesus won’t have to do that with any rings on your right hand then, but that you will offer them to Him today.
*as per usual, the names of the guilty have been changed, the innocent need no such protections