Like A Handprint on My Heart

I will freely admit that I’m a bit of a geek for musicals; just the other day I jumped up on the couch Tom Cruise-style to lip sync a rendition of “If I Were a Bell” from "Guys and Dolls." While at school in Chicago, I was able to see "Wicked", a new hit play about what happened in Oz before Dorothy and the Wizard and that bit. The play is getting rave reviews left and right, and I loved it. In one of the last songs, the two main characters, Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, sing to each other about their friendship (yes, friendship) and how it’s changed them. One of my favorite lines goes, “So much of me/ Is made of what I learned from you/ You'll be with me/ Like a handprint on my heart.”
It’s the handprint bit that really got me.
It’s so true!
Think for a second about, say, the five most important people in your life. Haven’t they all left a handprint on your heart? I can definitely see where my family and loved ones have left their handprints. I would even go so far as to suggest that everyone in your life leaves at least a tiny fingerprint of influence. And wouldn’t you know it, prints of all kinds (hands, fingers, toes, even your tongue has its own print!) are all unique. Every person who is important to us has left a unique stamp on who we are, changing us “for good,” as the song says.

But what about the One who actually made that heart that has so many handprints on it? Indeed, God’s handprints are all over my heart alongside my family and friends’. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, He’s the one who “knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Indeed, I can see God’s unique handprint on my heart even more than anyone else’s—in events in my life, in shining moments of faith, and even in the fact that I can find a connection between God and a musical about the mystical land of Oz. He must have been in a fine mood the day He made me--couch jumping, lip synching and all.