Today you get a guest artist! This quote from Jeremiah 1:5 was illustrated by Claire Jones. She puts some of her work up on Instagram here. If you need a calligrapher, why not give her some work?
So, here’s a beautiful verse. It comes from the opening chapter of Jeremiah – a book from the Old Testament. Jeremiah is one of the major prophets in the old testament – and like all the prophetic books, it records the actions of a man called by God to be his mouthpiece to a group of people. Here we have God giving Jeremiah a job to do, but unlike most job offers you or I have received, the Father explains that he has handpicked his man prior even to his conception.
You can’t really say no at that point.
This God knows you
Through the mechanics of biology he himself devised, it was he that shaped you in the womb. He can say without hint of exaggeration that before your life began he knew you – and while this verse is aimed at Jeremiah, the same is true of you. Before you were born Jesus went to the cross and died for your sake – indeed, before the foundations of the universe were laid he chose us for adoption as his sons and daughters (Ephesians 1:3-5).
This God cares about you
You might feel lonely, unlovely, unnoticed, but nothing escapes his attention. No one is unimportant in his sight – on the contrary, he ignores all convention and treats the scum of the earth with the same love and tenderness as its kings and queens.
This God wants you
Before you were born, his eye was on you. Before your birth, and long before your death, his heart was for you, to bring you back to him. It may be that you’ve spoken to him before and felt no answer came – that no one was listening, or if they were they had more important things to do. The reverse is astonishingly true – the heart of a lovesick Father beats incessantly in Heaven for the sake of his missing children. He waits with baited breath for you to call.