Everybody squeeze in, the photographer says, and forty people in their good shoes shuffle toward the middle of the lawn, and she does what she always does, which is step to the end of the row so nobody has to move for her.
A shoulder comes in front of her. Somebody's uncle, laughing at something, leaning left. She can already see the print. She will be an ear and a piece of sleeve at the edge of the frame, and nobody will notice, and in twenty years someone will pick up the photograph and count the cousins and come up one short and not know who is missing.
She is not bitter about it. That is the strange part, and she has noticed it about herself for years. She is the one who sends the card. She is the one who remembers that it is a year today since somebody's father died and texts them in the morning so they know one person remembered. She keeps a list. And her own phone does not ring on the day, and the invitation comes on the afternoon of the thing with sorry, we thought we had asked you, and she says it is fine, and it is, mostly. What is not fine is what it has done underneath. Because somewhere in the last few years, without ever deciding to, she has started to assume that God is like the photographer. Counting the crowd. Waving people into the middle. Not looking at the edge.
You are the one at the end of the row. You know the exact feeling of stepping aside so nobody has to move, and the exact weight of a phone that does not ring on the day. You are the one people forget to call, and you have started, quietly, to assume that He forgets too. Not that He is cruel. Just that there are a great many people and you are at the edge, half behind a shoulder, and it would be understandable.
Your sentence is in the Bible
Here is the first thing, and it might surprise you. The sentence you keep thinking is in Scripture, word for word, and God answers it directly.
Isaiah writes it down. Zion said: the LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me (Isaiah 49:14). That is you at the end of the row. That is your assumption, on the page, spoken by a whole city that had come to the same conclusion as you. And God does not scold it. He does not tell Zion to be more grateful. He answers it with a picture, and the picture He reaches for is a mother.
Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.Isaiah 49:15 to 16
Read what He is doing. He picks the strongest bond of memory the human race has, a mother and the child at her breast, the one a body itself will not let a woman forget for long, and He says: even that might fail. Even these may forget. And I will not.
So hear it as a settled thing and not a wish: you are not forgotten by God, and you cannot be, and He said so in exactly the place where somebody had said what you say. That is Isaiah, written, and it is His Spirit who takes a sentence a city said and answers it in one person's chest at the edge of a lawn. He heard the assumption. He answered it before you made it.
What the picture is, and what it is not
Let me be careful here, because a picture like this needs its edges held, and holding them is what keeps the comfort honest. God is neither male nor female. Scripture says so plainly, and He is not a woman any more than He is a man; He is God, and both were made in His image, male and female together (Genesis 1:27). And yet He describes Himself with a father's traits and a mother's, and He does both freely. In Psalm 103 it is as a father shows compassion to his children (Psalm 103:13); here in Isaiah 49 it is a nursing mother who cannot forget. Same God. Both true. Neither one lowered to raise the other. The Spirit, whose Hebrew word ruach happens to be a feminine noun as a matter of grammar and image, is not a woman or a goddess or a separate someone, and nothing in this article makes that claim or needs it. What God is doing in Isaiah is choosing a simile He wants you to feel, and He chose the one about remembering.
Now watch where He goes next, because the mother is not where He stops. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Not written on a list. Not remembered as a matter of policy. Cut into the hand. Engraving is not a note you can lose; it is a mark in the surface itself, and a hand does not forget what is cut into it, because the hand cannot look at itself without seeing it.
You are engraved on His hands, right now, and He cannot open them without you being there. That is Isaiah 49:16, and it is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a person feel a thing that was cut into God's own palm long before they were born. This is not a general statement about humanity. It is God's own hands, and your name.
Not one of them is forgotten
Jesus said the same thing from another angle, in a sentence about birds. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God (Luke 12:6). Then He turns and says the hairs of your head are all numbered, and you are of more value than many sparrows.
Numbered. Counted. Not the way the photographer counts, which is a headcount to see if the row is full. Numbered one by one, the way you would count something you did not want to lose any of. You are counted by God the way a person counts what is precious, and you have never once been the one who came up short. That is Luke, written down, and His Spirit is the one who reminds a person at the edge that the counting was never a headcount. He knows how many hairs. He is not going to lose a whole cousin.
So here is what has happened while you were reading. You came in at the edge of the photograph with an assumption you had never said out loud, and you have heard it read back to you out of Isaiah, and answered, in the same chapter, by God Himself. He reached for a mother's picture and then went further than any mother could: engraved, cut in, on His own hands. You are remembered by God as a matter of what He is and not of how many people are in the row, and that is written, and it is His Spirit who is telling you now, at the edge, in this exact place.
You are not counted the way a photographer counts, and you were never at the edge of His attention. Isaiah 49:16 puts a name on His own hands, which is the front of Him and not the back row, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that into a man who remembers everybody's birthday and is remembered by nobody.
I have not asked you to feel more remembered. I have shown you where your name is. Whatever He does with the phone and the invitations and the years, and however He answers, that is His to decide, and I will not promise you a full row. What is yours is your own palm and a pen.
Declare this over yourself
Now speak these, out loud, with your name on your hand. You are in Christ, and being remembered by Him is yours as a fact of what He is, not something you earn by standing nearer the middle. Scripture is the ground under every line, and the Holy Spirit and not the strength of your feeling is what makes them land. However He answers over the empty days ahead, the outcome is His. The mountain on this lawn is an assumption that God counts heads like a photographer and misses the edge. Speak to it. Then to the fear underneath. Then to Him.
- Edge of the photograph, you are where I stand and you are not where I am kept. Scripture says my name is engraved on the palms of His hands, and a hand does not forget what is cut into it.
- Assumption that God forgets me too, get out of my mind, in the name of Jesus. Isaiah says even a nursing mother may forget and He never does, and His Spirit is the one saying it to me at the end of the row.
- Lord, You have not forgotten me and You cannot, because I am cut into Your hands and not written on a list. I thank You that I am not lost in the crowd, and I am reading Your word over my own name today.
Isaiah 49:16
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