I was getting a document notarized. The notary checked my driver’s license, looked over the document, and watched me sign it. He then opened his journal and asked me to sign again. Finally, he placed an ink pad in front of me so I could leave my thumbprint.
I had done this many times before. It was all routine. Then a strange thought occurred to me. “What would you do if the person were a double amputee? They wouldn’t have any fingerprints.”
The notary stopped and smiled. “You know, that was actually a question on our exam.”
He explained that there was a procedure for it. The person’s identity could still be established, and the notary would record that the person was physically unable to provide a fingerprint. The system had made provision for someone who could not leave the expected mark.
As I pressed my thumb onto the ink pad, I began thinking about why the fingerprint was needed in the first place. It was another way of confirming that I was really the person named in the document. Our fingerprints are considered uniquely ours. They can distinguish us from billions of other people. Yet a fingerprint says very little about the person who left it. It cannot reveal whether I am honest. It cannot show what I love, what I fear, or what I regret. It cannot record the private choices that have shaped my life. It cannot tell anyone who I am when no one else is watching.
A fingerprint can help confirm my physical identity, but God already knows everything behind it.
O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
Psalm 139:1 (ESV)
God does not need a driver’s license, a signature, or a fingerprint to identify me. He knew me before I could speak my name. He sees the thoughts I never express and the motives I sometimes hide even from myself.
That realization is both comforting and sobering. It is comforting because no physical loss could ever make someone less visible to God. A person without hands has lost neither identity nor worth. Every human being still bears the image of God. No disability can erase that.
It is sobering because I cannot create a false identity before Him. I may be able to persuade other people that I am someone I am not. I may even persuade myself. God sees the person beneath the appearance.
The Lord knows those who are his.
2 Timothy 2:19 (ESV)
That simple statement carries tremendous assurance. Those who belong to Christ are never misplaced, overlooked, or confused with someone else. Our security does not depend upon leaving the right mark in the right book. It rests in the One who knows us completely and calls us by name.
The Bible gives us an image more powerful than any fingerprint:
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
Isaiah 49:16 (ESV)
I had placed my fingerprint in the notary’s journal as evidence that I had been there. Scripture describes something far more personal. God speaks of His people as engraved upon His own hands. Fingerprints can be smudged. Records can be lost. Our bodies can be injured and changed. But no one who belongs to Christ is ever unknown to Him.
Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.
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