“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!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
Isaiah 49:15-16 (NIV)
When Isaiah wrote this around 701 B.C., the Israelites were at a critical point in their history, of being taken captive by the brutal Assyrian Empire. All their hopes were shattered, but Isaiah, the prophet inspired by the Holy Spirit, stepped up to speak these memorable words to His people. God reassured them to keep hoping in Him, because His love for us is more enduring than the love of a mother. Then Isaiah said that the Lord has engraved His people in the palms of His hands.
The words in today’s scripture convey a tender image of God’s love for us, which is parental, unconditional, enduring, sacrificial and transcends all human limitations and frailties.
To engrave, pierce or cut into one’s hand seems like a strange way to express love, but when we visualize engraved palms, we can’t help but think of the nails that engraved the hands and feet of Jesus. Isaiah was prophetically hinting of the crucifixion of Jesus, 700 years before He ever entered the world.
To engrave something correlates to a covenant. People have wedding bands engraved, or lockets in order to memorialize a covenant of love. God once engraved His commandments in stone tablets, as a covenant between Himself and His people, but He went a step further with the new covenant. Instead of engraving in stone, the engraving was in the hands and feet of His son.
Jesus came into the world with a human body, with hands that could touch the untouchables, comfort the weary and hug those who thought they were forgotten. Those same hands raised the dead and healed the sick, but in the end, He spread His hands out to be nailed to a cross.
Love is best expressed through sacrifice, and Jesus, our sacrifice, engraved us in the palms of His hands and feet, forever. He had no scars in his hands or feet until His crucifixion, which are permanently engraved in Him.
The deep scars from His pierced hands and feet, remained on His resurrected body, and changed His appearance forever. He has all the power to make those scars disappear, but He chooses to wear them forever. A scar is a reminder of a wound that once bled.
The engraved hands of Jesus are the memorial of His love for us.
It’s a new covenant, which is more perfect than the old one that had words engraved on stone tablets. Jesus called it the new covenant in His blood, which is poured out for us. (Luke 22:20)
There are times in every believer’s life, when God seems to be far away, especially during sorrow or grief. We get overwhelmed by our problems and tragedies, which causes us to occasionally look up and ask, “Lord, are you there ?”
Then Jesus answers and says, “Look at my hands and feet, you are engraved here forever.”
Lord, thank you for the memorial scars of your love for us, that you bear in your hands and feet forever. Amen
