“And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.” Isaiah 12:1 (KJV)
When my oldest son came home from prison a year ago he sported full arm and leg tattoos. I knew that all tattoos have a story behind them, but I could not understand what all the faces, combined and linked together with tubes, meant. I asked my son to explain it all to me; he said that they were angry men linked together by a lifeline.
I found myself studying the tattoos as we watched TV at night. I didn’t see angry men, I saw something very different in each face. I saw the artist’s inner turmoil, stirred by years in prison, coming out on a living canvas.
Some faces showed fear, some faces showed pain, some faces showed sorrow, some rage – all hopelessness. One appeared to be a demon swallowing a child, its eyes stitched closed; childhood lost.
The tubes between seemed to be the tubes of nourishment that kept them all alive and also the chains of incarceration that prevented them from finding freedom and hope. Years of addictions and bad choices added faces to the lines, banding them together as brothers through their lifeline tubes gave them some small amount of security. They depended on each other not to sever the tubes that kept them all alive. All manifested fear of possible disconnection in different ways.
When I look at the tattoos I see the inmates in prison, struggling to survive without losing their identity. I see the artist’s renditions of the faces surrounding him every day. I see the emotions he feels himself, flowing from his needle. Hopelessness. Aloneness. Unwantedness.
The sad thing is, these emotions aren’t only an attribute of inmates, but are found in grocery stores, movie theaters, classrooms and in our own children. The pressures of everyday life are overwhelming people to such proportions that they lose hope, fall to despair and give up on life.
How sad that we, the body of Christ, for fear of ridicule and rejection, keep back the very solution to their problems. We hide the light given freely to us through our love of Christ. We crimp off the true lifeline that would bring them peace, joy and hope.
What if we just took a chance? What if we took a moment to offer prayer to someone in despair? What if we wrapped our arms around the homeless and shared the gospel along with a hot meal and a warm jacket? What if we comfort a crying child while the mother regains composure, and then offer to help by prayer and child care and taking them to church.
What if we stepped past our own insecurities and showed the love of Jesus to a hurting world, mentoring another as we do? What if we could bring hope to just one? The whole world could be changed – one person at a time.
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By Linda J. Humes
Written 7-14-2013
Linda J. Humes 
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