Isaiah 49:15-16
Can a woman forget her sucking 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 graven you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
It is a tragic sign of our times that the very thing Isaiah used as an example of the unthinkable (a mother having no compassion on the son of her womb) is now an example of the all-too-commonplace evil of abortion. Yet Isaiah was not naïve. He knew the brutality that human beings were capable of and within a few years of his prophecies, his beloved city of Jerusalem would see horrendous cruelties inflicted against it during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege. So Isaiah puts no bottom line on human cruelty and depravity. He leaves himself an escape hatch and says, “Even these may forget.” You never know, says Isaiah. There may come a day when people do commit such atrocities against their own children. But even if that day should come, he continues, God will still be there for us. And Isaiah was right. For the day came when the Son of Man received no compassion from us and we engraved our names in blood on the palms of his hands as he hung outside the walls of Jerusalem. Yet for all that, he never forgot us and always, always offered us forgiveness.
