Fingerprints

In Genesis 1:26, God says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” God didn’t make our physical image like His, but our hearts were meant to reflect His image to the world.

In the Garden, God gave a commandment that Adam and Eve disobeyed. They failed to choose what God said, and sin entered their hearts. Because Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, God banished them from the garden so that they would not eat from the tree of eternal life too.

I believe God originally intended for man and woman to be eternal like He was. That is excatly why the tree existed. I believe there would have been a time when God allowed them to eat from the tree, but He was testing their obedience to God. Man was created to worship God. Although they sinned, God still loved them. He didn’t want them to be caught in sin eternally because He wanted to bring them back to Himself.

God chose to give man free will. He gave man choice, which is the only way obedience can happen.

After the fall, after disobedience, and after sin entered the hearts of man, we were no longer in God’s image spiritually. Our hearts became fallen and broken. God is Holy and has no sin in Him. We no longer reflected His glory.

The only way for God to get us back into His original plan for us to be image bearers was to send His Son Jesus to offer His life on the cross to then impart His holiness to us. The blood of Jesus shed on the cross allows us to be redeemed in Christ. And in Christ, we are again able to reflect God's image!

Before Jesus came, God gave His people the Ten Commandments. These tablets were described in Exodus 31:18 and Deuteronomy 9:10 as “written with the finger of God”. The only place that differentiates us from others and declares our identity are our fingerprints. Even the FBI uses fingerprints to identify individuals. They recognize the fact that every single person has a unique set of fingerprints.

Each one of us was created with fingerprints that identify who we are. Why do you think that is? If we were made in God’s image, don’t you think everyone would have been given the same physical attributes? But look around. They weren’t. People have different eye colors, hair colors, skin colors, personalities, talents, and fingerprints. Why do you think that is?

I think God wanted to create a diverse tapestry of people who, in unity as the body of Christ, can reflect His image.

Let’s take some time to look at our fingerprints. As I already stated they are the one legal thing that differentiates every person from one another other than DNA, and that is a subject I will address at another time. Even twin babies have different fingerprints. Do you know how fingerprints are formed? I didn’t, but let me tell you because it’s so amazing!

One day I was talking with God about a few things, and as a result of our conversation, I decided to look up how we get our fingerprints. I am amazed that I had never heard about this before! Why is this not common knowledge? Why do we all just take for granted that we have them but not bother to find out how we got them? Isn’t that the way with everything? Anything becomes commonplace? I have never heard anyone explain this before. I didn’t learn this in biology class. I never heard this from a pulpit. No one has ever told me this, but as I questioned my uniqueness, God began to answer in a way that has changed my life forever!

Psalm 139:13 -14 says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made” that God has divinely fingerprinted us. He has designed us down to the very tiniest detail. Every atom and cell is known and directed by His Spirit. But our fingerprints are something that God allows us to become co-creator with.

In a beautiful dance deep inside the womb of a mother as her baby forms, so does this alliance with God. By the time a baby is seventeen weeks old, halfway through a normal pregnancy, fingerprints become set. Here is the fantastic story of fingerprints where God again allows for individual choice at an alarmingly young age, before our birth! Here too, God is declaring an unborn fetus an entirely intentional person with cognitive free will and identity. Not just a thing but a person.

As the baby forms there comes a time when there are no fingerprints on the pads of the fingers or toes. They are tiny blank slates. The baby has grown enough muscle, bone, and brain function to reach out to touch its surroundings. When the baby decides it wants to reach out and touch its environment, to touch its mother then it reaches out. This is precisely when our fingerprints are formed. Each time a baby reaches out and touches the inside of the mother’s uterus, ridges, arches, loops and whorls are formed.

Every child reaches out differently, just as every person is made uniquely. And so, each set of fingerprints cannot be replicated. The fingerprints are a result of working together with the Creator. God gave the baby an ability to reach and a brain to move its arm and hand out, and he gave the baby free will to decide if and when it did so.

Hidden deep within the untouched microcosm of a mother’s womb, we see the creation and the creator becoming co-laborers and unified together for the first of many times to come!

For me, this is not only beautiful but honestly, it is mind-blowing. The way that we are identified by the world we are born into comes as a result of the very first ways that we chose to reach out to it! In connecting with our immediate surroundings, our identity is formed.

Think about that with me for a moment. Spiritually this is what happens in our hearts as well. We become born again from above. We are spiritual infants put in an environment that significantly affects us. How we reach out within that environment helps form the fingerprints, the identifying charachter of our hearts.

Track with me here. Each child grows up in a different environment even if they are siblings, each will have unique experiences within the same family. And different households will have different traditions and cultures, and mental health realities. Each person grows up with a unique set of circumstances. They each choose how they will reach out and when they will reach out to that world that they live in. And so the fingerprints of our heart are formed in the same way. They distinctly identify us.

God allows these things to form without His manipulation. And yet we are still made in His image in Christ. In Christ, our hearts can be transformed. They can go from being hard like stone to flesh. We are brought back into the garden to be who God intended for us to be. We can walk with God again in an intimate relationship. How amazing is it that?

God intentionally left the finger pads of our hands blank. He could have formed them himself. He could have made each one different by His own creative powers without allowing us to be a part of their formation. God is the one that makes our eyes see, our ears hear, and our lungs process oxygen. God makes our heartbeat, so why did He leave our fingertips blank.?

The answer again is free will. He gifted us with our own tiny blank canvases to paint on. For we are made in His image, and since He is a Creator, He allowed us to participate in our own creation. Before we would walk or talk or breathe the breath that He gave us, we would have free will.

God didn’t just make a bunch of little gods. He made sons and daughters. And the reason why I am sharing this with you this week is that last week we looked at Jesus calling a nameless woman out of a crowd. Her identity had been overridden by everything that had happened to her. He called her out of that fallenness and He healed her through the power of who He was, His identity. He invited her back into the family and called her daughter. Jesus brought her into a relationship to walk in the garden with Him.

Today we are looking even closer. We started a few weeks ago with the red sea where God saved His chosen people. Then we looked at a chosen individual and how God made her whole again by reminding her who she really was. And now, we are looking at the tiny fingerprints on each person’s hand. The littlest thing, but yet so purposeful. God does not miss a thing; He is in every single detail.

The fingerprints that you leave all over your world leave traces of you, and your heart in turn leaves imprints of God. Think about it you leave fingerprints everywhere you go on everything and everyone you touch. Even now, by reaching out and touching, every pen you pick up, every coffee cup, and every person that you hug, you are leaving your fingerprints, leaving traces of your identity on them.

If we could see our fingerprints without dusting them, can you imagine what the world would look like? What if we could see all the fingerprints over all time on everything around us? Can you imagine if each set were a different color to represent its unique origin? Can you imagine seeing them on ourselves from every hug and touch both good and bad. The echoes of all of our interactions, of all of our human experiences, just sitting there written all over us like tattoos for all to see.

The ultimate fingerprint is the blood of Jesus, which covers us when we come to Him and accept our need for Holiness. The blood that transforms us, that brings us back into the family, back into the garden to walk with Him. As crazy as this may sound, in Revelation 7:3 it says “Do not harm the earth or the seas or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” Indeed God marks us with His spiritual fingerprint. He seals us with the mark of his Holy Spirit. Just as on the night of the original Passover, when the blood placed by the Israelites above their doorposts identified them as the chosen ones whose families belonged to God.

In the family of God, we get to walk with God accomplishing His purposes, yet we still get to be an individual. We get to choose if we want to be with Him or not. We interact with one another and the world around us, reaching out when and how we choose. It’s a big, big world full of teeny tiny details as small as the ridges and whorls of our very fingerprints. And God has not missed a thing!

So here is what I want to challenge you with right now. Look at your hands. Stop and really look. Those fingerprints you see were formed when you reached out with your own free will as a tiny baby in your mother’s womb. You wanted to connect because you were created to connect, to be in a relationship with God.

Now think about everywhere that you leave those fingerprints. Whether you see them or not, they are there. You are leaving impressions and imprints on the people's hearts, too.

I just want to remind you today how important you are to God. You are so cherished that He has allowed you to be part of the creation process. He has gifted you that little bit of being a creator. Why? Because we are made in His image. Because He loves us. And because He has a plan that is way bigger than one individua person. A plan that encompasses so many details. More than we could ever fathom. His ways are higher than our ways; His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Please hear this; you are well thought of. You were made on purpose. You are loved. There is a plan for your life and a calling for all of who you are and how you were made. Just believe and step into it. It all begins with Jesus. He was willing to be contained inside a mother’s womb, growing as a fragile little baby. His fingerprints were formed inside Mary’s womb. They, too, were different than anyone else’s

Can you imagine all of the places where Jesus’ fingerprints touched the world that He created ? Think of the story when He wrote with his finger in the sand. What about the blind eyes that he healed with his touch or the carpentry tools that he learned to work with? Consider the hugs that he gave those he loved and the hands that he held. Think about the plate that he passed to the one who betrayed Him and the cup that He drank from. Amazingly they were on the cross that he had to carry. His fingerprints were on all of those things, and now He is himself the fingerprint of God which has been placed on each one of us. By his Holy blood shed on the Cross, when God looks at us, He sees Jesus.

Because of this Holy mark, we are accepted, and we are loved. We are welcomed back into the family.

AMANDA SCHAEFERDecember 16, 2022