Time for a devotional series! I’ll have four little tidbits for you to pray with this week; enjoy!
“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast,
walk away from the baby she bore?
But even if mothers forget,
I’d never forget you—never.
Look, I’ve written your names on the backs of my hands.”
~ Isaiah 49: 15-18
The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
Through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, God compares herself to a postpartum woman, a mother who could never forget the baby at her breast. Anyone who has breastfed knows how the body won’t let a mother forget the infant at her breast. Her entire being is devoted to the cause of making milk to feed the baby. The economy of the postpartum woman’s body is awe-inspiring. While healing its own tissue, this body is simultaneously aligning its efforts to produce nourishment for another.
Her hormones are fluctuating, her cells are replicating and redirecting, utilizing oxygen, blood, sweat, tears – all of it – at the service of the infant.
I often felt like I was leaking out of every possible orifice when I was first nursing my daughter: sweat leaking from my glands as my hormones labored to regulate into a new normal, tears leaking from my eyes in wonder and awe (and exhaustion), blood and guts flowing from my vagina as that whole contraption healed, and milk leaking from my nipples – in search of the baby. The body doesn’t let you forget.
The whole body is working to nourish this baby. Live, survive, thrive, little one.
Likewise, it is impossible for God to forget us. Forget you. Live, survive, thrive, little one.
Can you be with God – a vulnerable, determined new mother – completely focused on her offspring, attending to its every need, carving our names into the back of her hands?
