In His Hands

“But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, and my LORD has forgotten me.’ ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.’” Isaiah 49:14-16 NKJV

Over the years I have heard people quote the Bible as saying GOD has written our names on the palms of His hands. I believe that is the implied understanding of Isaiah 49:16 and as I was thinking about that I thought how awesome it was that whenever GOD; our Heavenly Father; looked at the palms of His hands He saw my name. Every time! But more than that He sees the names of every person that was ever conceived or at least every person that ever called on His name for salvation. How awesome!

Yet as I took the effort to find the actual scripture and read it I was amazed at what it actually says. It is so amazing that I checked every translation that I have and they all say the same thing. GOD did not just write my name in the palm of His hand; He inscribed me in the palm of His hand. When He looks at His palms He sees everything about me there is to know. This is where Psalm 139 is so amazing in that it says that GOD wrote out all the days of our life before any of them existed.* This means that when He looks at the palms of His hands He sees everything about every person ever conceived. That is awesomely amazing!

There are some who will say this is about the Jews only, it was written to the Jews and is for the Jews, but in the context of the whole chapter it is about Jesus and salvation for humanity. There are some who will say this is for believers only, but GOD loves every person ever conceived and Jesus died for every person ever conceived.

If your view, understanding, faith in GOD struggles with this then your view of GOD is just too small; go back and study Genesis chapters 1-5 and The Gospel of John chapters 1-3. Our Heavenly Father the triune GOD, Elohim, who made everything that exists also lives in all believers, we are His living temple in the earth, He spreads out the universe like a cloak and holds all creation in His hands. Stop thinking of GOD only as a Father who provides for our daily needs and loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us so that we don’t have to go to hell with the devil. He is so much more than that, more than we will ever know and understand in this mortal life. So we should be seeking to know and understand Him as much as we can!

*Earlier this year during worship we sang a song that said, “You rewrote my history!” this had a profound effect on my understanding of Psalm 139:16, “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” NKJV. I understood that when I was born again that GOD forgave my sins and did not see them when He looked at me or thought about me. He did not see my past life of sin, He only saw my life as He had written it out before I was born. When I became a Born again Christian at the age of 23 my first 22 years were erased in the sea of forgetfulness and He sees what they should have been as if they were! This is another amazingly awesome concept of who GOD is and how He sees and interacts with us.