If Jesus Had a Tattoo

Surely you’ve thought about it. If you were going to get a tattoo, what would it be?

I have no real insights on this one. Everything I think of only sounds cool for about five seconds. And my husband has wisely postulated that if you want to get a tattoo, you should wait ten years to see if you still want it, and then get it.

I will say that tattoos are great conversation starters–because every tattoo has a story. Kind of like scars.

I can tell you that the scar on my right knee was from when I was in fifth grade and thought I should probably start shaving my legs. (Oops.)

Or the scar above my eyebrow is from when I ran into the corner of my parents’ dresser when I was a kid. (I have not gained a significant amount of coordination since that illustrious moment, hence more scars.)

I can tell you where I dropped a curling iron on my thigh while sitting in a camper in junior high. (The irony is not lost on me. Look at my hair?)

Our tattoos and our scars bear our stories.

“What are these?”

A couple of weeks ago, I felt my nine-year-old’s chilly hand on my stomach when I stretched. “What are these?”

Oh. You mean those lines that make my stomach resemble corrugated cardboard?

“Stretch marks. Your oldest brother put most of them there. Your second brother topped them off. And by the time you and your sister came around, things were pretty much already stretched out.” But they’re worth it, I explained. I got the babies.

No stretch marks or no you guys? No contest.

His Scar; His Story

And in that vein, one of my favorite verses of late has been this one:

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;
your walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16)

I find this interesting in light of Good Friday–perhaps the truest, blackest Friday (in terms of both grief and debts paid).

My name was engraved on those palms with spikes.

If Jesus had a tattoo? A scar?

It would be us.

Even after Jesus rose from the dead, he didn’t lose the scars (see John 20:27). And in Revelation, we know Jesus appears as “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (5:6).

If you asked him, he could tell you a story of a good King, betrayed and disbelieved, of a Son given as ransom for many. Of blood spattering, and neatly folded linen.

I don’t know where this week finds you. Perhaps you’re feeling alienated by God, forgotten, deep in a cocoon of pain. Or maybe you’re trying to dredge up some meaning for Good Friday, because you’ve been there, done that year after year.

Put your finger here. See my hands.

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