There are two photographs on his mother's wall and he is in neither of them.
The first is his niece's wedding. Forty one people on the steps of the hall, everybody squeezed in, the small ones at the front being told to stand still. He was round the back with two stacks of chairs because the room had to be turned round for the meal and somebody had to start.
The second is his own godson's, two years later. Thirty six people. Same thing. He was moving tables.
Nobody left him out. That is the first thing and it matters. Somebody called. He heard them call, and he thought, I will come in a minute, and by the time the minute was up they had taken it and everybody had scattered and there is no version of that day where it gets retaken.
Both times. The same decision, made by him, in about four seconds, twice.
He is fifty seven and he has been the one who moves the chairs at every gathering in that family since he was in his twenties.
And in March, at his mother's house, he was standing in the hall waiting for her to find her keys, and he was looking at those two frames side by side, and something went through him that he has not shaken since.
He thought: there is going to be a day when I am gone, and my grandchildren are going to look at these walls, and I am not going to be in the pictures.
Not because anybody minded. Because he was carrying the chairs.
He has not said that to a living soul. It sounds like self pity when you put it into words and he would rather not be a man who says things like that out loud, and so he has carried it about since March, and it comes back most in a hallway or at a table when somebody gets a camera out.
You know those frames. Yours may be a different kind of record. But you know what it is to be the reason a day worked and to be absent from every account of it, and to have chosen that yourself, in four seconds, out of a real love, more than once.
A record nobody has to be gathered for
Let me name the pit before we go to the book, because if this becomes a complaint about photographs it will be smaller than what is actually going on.
The pit is not the frames. It is the day he saw in that hallway: the future one, where the people who come after him look at a wall and he is not on it. That is not vanity. That is a man asking whether there will be any record that he was here, and it is one of the oldest questions there is, and it arrives at fifty seven in a hallway while somebody looks for keys.
Here is the verse.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.Isaiah 49:16
Read what kind of record that is.
Graven is cut, not written. It is what a mason does to stone, and it does not fade and it cannot be mislaid and there is no version of it that gets taken while somebody is round the back with two stacks of chairs.
And look where He put it. Not in a book on a shelf. On the hands. On the part of Himself that does everything, so that it is in front of Him permanently, whatever else is going on.
Nobody has to be gathered for that record. Nobody has to call you in from the back. Nobody counts to three.
And the verse before it takes the measure of the whole thing.
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Isaiah 49:15
I want to handle that carefully. God is not making an accusation about anybody's mother, and this article makes no claim at all about yours. He takes the strongest bond in the world He made, says even that is capable of failing, and then sets Himself past it.
Here the line goes in the same paragraph, because on this ground the picture never travels without it. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Isaiah 49:15 is a comparison God chose to say something about His own remembering. It does not make God a mother, He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the picture stays exactly the shape He gave it. Scripture reaches for a father's language for Him constantly and a mother's deliberately, and this is one of the motherly ones, and it is His own.
Take that in the hallway, and know it is not my comfort, it is what is written. You are in the only record that does not fade, and you did not have to stop what you were doing to get into it. Isaiah 49:16 has a name cut into a palm, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that down into a man who has been looking at two frames since March.
Every stone went up on your timber. Both of those weddings worked because you were round the back.
You are in the record that does not get taken while you are carrying chairs, and you were never cropped out of it. Isaiah 49:16 has a name cut into a palm, permanently, with nobody counting heads, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that into a man who has been outside the frame at two weddings running.
That is true and it is not enough on its own, and I am not going to hand it to you as if it were, because the question in that hallway was not about whether you were useful. You know you were useful. The question was whether anybody will know you were here.
So here is the answer, and it is not a photograph.
There is a record of you cut into the hands of God, and nobody has to be gathered for it and nothing gets missed while you are moving tables. That is Isaiah 49:16 read exactly as written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries that into a man standing in a hallway in March, which no album on a wall was ever going to do.
And I want to say something about your grandchildren, because that is where this actually lives.
They will not know you from a wall. Nobody knows anybody from a wall. What they will have is a family that gathers, and rooms that got turned round in time, and a mother and a father who were able to eat a meal at their own wedding because somebody was already moving chairs.
That is not a consolation prize for missing a photograph. It is the thing itself, and it is not visible in a frame for exactly the same reason that timber is not visible in a cathedral.
And if you want to be in the next one, and there is no shame in wanting that, then go and stand in it. Somebody will call, and the chairs will take four minutes longer, and nothing on this earth will fall over.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the hallway or at the table. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over a question about whether you were here is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on any photograph being retaken, and none of them will be. These stand on what is written in Isaiah and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by anything on anybody's wall. What your grandchildren know of you, and how, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- Two photographs I am not in, you are not the record that counts, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Isaiah 49:16 says He has graven me on the palms of His hands, and nobody has to call me in from the back for that one.
- Thought that came in that hallway, that there will be nothing on the wall to say I was here, you have no standing in this house. It is written that they may forget, yet will He not forget thee, and His Spirit is the one who keeps that record, which does not fade and cannot be mislaid.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female and You have cut my name into Your hands. I have written it on my own palm and read it out loud over the top, and the next time they call I am putting the chairs down and standing in the picture.
Isaiah 49:16
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
