Life

Engraved

My Old Testament Bible reading today made me think about a lot of things. I will not take the time to comment on my reading from Leviticus (the detail of the Israelites’ sacrifices is amazing), but I will comment on a thought from Isaiah. If you are reading through the Old Testament this summer, you may be at a different place than me, but today one of my chapters was Isaiah 49. I was captured by a verse that so encouraged me – verse 16. There are times we feel abandoned in life. It may come from a crisis or a failure, but nevertheless, we may wonder if God has forgotten us. While we really know He hasn’t, we still can’t get past the feeling of being alone. While I don’t really feel abandoned, I have been carrying a weight of questions that cannot be answered in dealing with my parent’s illness. My mother has Alzheimer’s and my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer last week. My parents are godly people who have given their lives to serving the Lord. I really can’t think of anything worse than Alzheimer’s. Thankfully the disease is moving forward very slowly, and hopefully we will have a lot of time still, but nevertheless the initial consequences of the disease are obvious now. The scripture I read this morning was such an encouragement to me. God was referring to the feelings of abandonment that Israel may have been feeling. He asked the question “Can a mother forget her baby?” Surely a mother wouldn’t forget her nursing baby, but God said, “Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” God will never forget us because He loves us. We are forever on His mind and in His plans. It was the next phrase in the verse that pressed its way into my head and heart: “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” What a great thought! The idea crossed my mind that our hands are the most visible part of our bodies to our own eyes. God said that He has engraved us in the palms of his hands and is therefore constantly thinking of us. God loves us! We are ever on His mind. He will never abandon us, even if it feels that way. He will never forsake us, even if our problems have overwhelmed us. Your name, or even your face, has been tattooed into the palm of the Most High God. You are the apple of His eye and the picture on His hand.

One Comment

  • roger jones

    Tim the older you (we) get the more these things are going to come up and it is ROUGH. Going through the aging process of your parents and dealing with heal issues are going to be there and thank God for his Love and support. Once they are gone, and you get older and older and older you have times and spells of loneliness and a feeling like you are now treading water till death–getting to the finish line of this life. We Christians all know to KEEP OUR EYES ON JESUS and we will make it OK> R Jones

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