Unforgettable

Day 1:

Inscribed!

Can a woman forget her nursing child and, not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me (Isaiah 49:15-16 NKJV).

I was very excited. My teacher was back! Well, not exactly back—she was home for a visit. Home, from "overseas", where she had moved before the end of my first year.

She had been my teacher when I arrived, a lost and confused transfer, in the strange and noisy classroom at the village elementary school. She quickly took me under her wing and before long, I thought less and less of my old school in "Town."

The news that she was moving to England came as a shock, and the pillars in my scholastic world tottered once more as I went through a second major adjustment that year. But even when the ground became solid again, England was always there in its muddle of associations—the queen, and Miriam Makeba, and the discussions for or against apartheid in South Africa, and Greenwich Mean Time, and the Boop, Boop, Boop prelude to the BBC News on the radio, and the ad nauseum scoring details of every football match: "Manchester United-2, Liverpool, nil..." And Ms Em.

And now, she was home. I hoped she would come visit me. But that very Sunday as we walked home from church, Ms. Em materialized before us—right there at the entrance to my great aunt’s shop.

Overcome with a mixture of excitement and shyness, I hung back a little behind my mother; slightly trailing my sister on the other side of her. And then, Ms. Em was upon us, greeting our mother, exchanging pleasantries. And finally, as I lifted my shy gaze toward the teacher I couldn’t wait to see, Ms. Em gaily exclaimed, “And who is this one?”

Perhaps it is in these deeply wounding moments of human forgetfulness that the remarkable promises of God stand out in such stark contrast. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you”, pens the writer of Hebrews, reiterating a promise God made to His people centuries before (Hebrews 13:5, Deuteronomy 31:6, 8).

It was the same promise God restated and emphasized through the prophet Isaiah using such powerful symbolism, Can a woman forget her nursing child and, not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me (Isaiah 49:15-16 NKJV).

Humans forget us. Humans fail us. We may get lost in data, and displacement, and information overload, and carelessness, and thoughtlessness. But the Creator of the ends of the earth knows our name. Knows the number of hairs on our head. Will never forget us. Even if we are not the queen. Or Miriam Makeba.