“I was here.”
Have you ever reflected on the Cueva de las Manos (the Cave of Hands?)
Is there anything more human than the impulse to make a mark that calls out to the world a simple, "I was here! I lived. I mattered."
When I think about the cave hands, I see love preserved by a pocketknife carving into the side of a tree. I see a lonely name signed in Sharpie on the wall of a bathroom stall. I see initials etched into a park bench across generations.
It seems that from the earliest memory of fallen humanity, we have longed for a basic and yet profound thing-- to be remembered. To live on. To matter in the march of time.
It is no mere coincidence that we have a human ritual of marking stone graves for our dead, bearing their names.
I'll never forget the sinking feeling in my soul the first time I walked an old colonial era cemetery filled with tombstones that had been so weathered by time and the elements that no names or dates remained on their surfaces. 250 years had wiped them clean. Stone cannot preserve our memory.
What a glorious and wonderful thing to have your name written in the Book of Life! To be remembered by God, who is the beginning and the end! To be written into a story with no end. To matter, not to the world, but to your Creator and the eternal Kingdom for which you were made!
Man's search for meaning has led him down every avenue of virtue and sin, and I am sure of this: the Christ-shaped hole in our hearts can be filled only by Christ.
Psalm 111:4 (ESV)
“He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful.”
