The Study

Isaiah 49

Graven Upon the Palms of His Hands

The Forget-Me-Not

There is a small blue flower called the forget-me-not. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf once said that as a boy looking at them, he sometimes felt the same way — small, easy to overlook — and he wondered if he would be forgotten, by his own family or by Heavenly Father. Most people know that feeling by the time they are teenagers: left out of something, forgotten by someone, wondering if a prayer actually reached anyone.

Isaiah 49 was written to a people who felt exactly that. After Jerusalem fell and families were carried hundreds of miles from home, Isaiah pictures the city itself as a mother who has lost her children, sitting in the ruins. Through her, he gives voice to the exact complaint a person in real pain would make.

"But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me." (Isaiah 49:14)

Nephi later read this same chapter to his own brothers in the wilderness, a family cut off from everything familiar, and told them to liken it to themselves (see 1 Nephi 19:23). It is worth reading your own name in place of Zion's.

Graven Upon the Palms of His Hands

God's answer is not an argument. It is a picture.

"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." (Isaiah 49:15)

"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49:16)

Isaiah reaches for the strongest human love he can name — a mother for her nursing child — and says God's love is steadier even than that. Then he goes further than a feeling: he says God is marked, permanently, with us on His own hands. For Latter-day Saints that verse points straight to the resurrected Christ showing His wounded hands to the Nephites, letting them feel the marks "one by one" (see 3 Nephi 11:10-15). The proof that He has not forgotten us is not a promise written somewhere else. It is carried in His own body.

He Knows This From the Inside

Zion is not the only one in scripture who said this out loud. Elijah, after his greatest victory on Mount Carmel, ran into the wilderness exhausted and said, "I, even I only, am left" (1 Kings 19:10). God's answer was not instant correction. It was food, sleep, a quiet voice, and then the truth — seven thousand others had never bowed to Baal (see 1 Kings 19:18). Elijah was not alone. He only felt that way.

On the cross, Jesus Christ Himself asked the hardest version of this question: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that this was not a performance — the Savior had to feel the Spirit withdraw completely, so that no one else would ever have to feel that alone in the same final way: "Because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so" ("None Were with Him," April 2009). He knows this feeling, not from a distance, but from the inside.

Questions Worth Sitting With, and One Thing to Try

  • When has a feeling told you something that turned out not to be true?
  • Who has been, for you, the kind of person God sent when you needed one — even if they never knew it?
  • If the proof that God remembers you is not a feeling but a fact, graven on His own hands, what difference should that make this week?

President Uchtdorf said it plainly, after a lifetime of learning it was true: "I was never forgotten. ... I proclaim with all the certainty and conviction of my heart—neither are you!" ("Forget Me Not," October 2011). Each night this week, ask yourself one question before you sleep: did I see His hand today? You may be surprised how often the answer is yes.

From the Church’s manuals

This lesson is one teacher’s preparation. The Church’s manual is the place to start, and it has more than any one class can cover.

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