Tattoos are a walking history. I have never gotten one but I’ve lived long enough I’ve seen a bunch!
Back “in the day” before they became elaborate artwork, tattoos I saw were pretty simple. A single object or a name. The object surely represented something that was important to the person having it, I figure, or why would someone plan, pay for, and sit through the process? They were usually placed on the upper arm and mostly on men.
I often wondered, and sometimes asked, if the name of the person on someone’s arm was still in that place of importance in their heart that they were at the time he got the tattoo. Other than the “mom”, the answer was usually no. Sometimes there were some pretty funny stories that often included booze before the “tat act”. Many were stories of getting close to being “shipped out” and they wanted to take their girl with them. There were no happy endings for the name on the muscle. But they had made peace with that and mostly gave no thought to that permanent mark on their arm until someone asked them about it.
I’ve never been important enough to anyone that they permanently put my name on their body so they wouldn’t forget me. I’ve never been the object of love so deep that in a passionate declaration of undying devotion, someone sat and endured pain to show me how important I was to them. Or so I thought…
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.”
God, who in Isaiah 49, was offering comfort to His people after they said He had forsaken them, told them HE had tattooed them on the palm of His hand. He who never forgets wanted to give them a visual of how important they were to Him, to tell them they were impossible to forget.
He has tattooed me. The One who created me, Who knows every thought I have, every mistake I’ve made and every mess-up I’ve been, has my name continually before Him. He does not regret it, no matter my past. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…” and the next verse says that Jesus did not come to condemn, but to save.
That hand of God that carries my name, sent Jesus to become my sin so I have become His righteousness, qualified to stand both adoring and adored, before Him. Permanently.
For His Glory 