When You Feel Forgotten by God
What the Savior’s Hands Say About You
There are prayers that feel answered almost before we finish saying amen.
And then there are prayers that seem to disappear into the ceiling.
You pray.
Wait.
Pray again.
Wait longer.
Nothing seems to change.
Eventually the question can become more personal than the original problem.
It stops being only:
When will this change?
And becomes:
Does God even see this?
That is a much heavier question.
Isaiah records a moment when an entire people felt that way.
Zion said:
“The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.”
—Isaiah 49:14
I appreciate that verse because scripture does not pretend faithful people never feel forgotten.
Sometimes they do.
You can believe in God and still wonder where He is.
You can pray sincerely and still feel quiet.
You can have a testimony and still have days when heaven seems farther away than you wish it were.
God does not shame Zion for feeling that way.
He answers.
First, He gives the image of a mother:
“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?”
Then He says:
“Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”
—Isaiah 49:15
And then comes one of the most beautiful promises in all of Isaiah:
“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”
—Isaiah 49:16
Not written.
Graven.
Engraved.
Cut into.
Permanent.
God is trying to tell His people:
You are not something I misplaced.
You are not buried somewhere under a stack of more important things.
I have not moved on.
I know you.
I remember you.
And Isaiah gives us the image of hands.
For Christians, that image becomes even more powerful when we think about Jesus Christ.
After His Resurrection, the Savior still bore the marks of His Crucifixion.
When He appeared to the people in the Americas, He invited them to come forward and feel the wounds in His hands and feet.
The Book of Mormon says they came:
“One by one.”
—3 Nephi 11:15
I love those three words.
The crowd was large.
The Savior’s Atonement was infinite.
But the experience was personal.
One.
By.
One.
Every person came.
Every person saw.
Every person knew.
The marks were His.
But the invitation was individual.
That teaches me something about the way Jesus Christ saves us.
His Atonement is large enough for the whole world.
But it is never impersonal.
He does not only know humanity.
He knows humans.
He knows you.
Your personality.
Your history.
Your weakness.
Your questions.
The thing you are worried about that nobody else seems to realize is a big deal to you.
The prayer you have repeated so many times you are starting to wonder whether you should keep praying it.
The disappointment you are trying not to talk about.
The wall standing in front of you.
That last image comes from Isaiah too.
Immediately after saying we are graven upon His hands, the Lord says:
“Thy walls are continually before me.”
—Isaiah 49:16
What is your wall?
Maybe it is a decision you do not know how to make.
A friendship that changed.
Something happening in your family.
A weakness you keep fighting.
A testimony question.
A future that feels uncertain.
A diagnosis.
A person you miss.
A prayer that still has no obvious answer.
Some walls are enormous.
Some probably look small to everybody except the person standing in front of them.
But Isaiah says:
“Thy walls are continually before me.”
In other words:
What is continually in front of you is also in front of Him.
That does not mean He will always remove the wall immediately.
Sometimes He opens a door.
Sometimes He helps us climb.
Sometimes He leads us around.
Sometimes we wait longer than we want.
But the wall is not hidden from Him.
Neither are you.
President Russell M. Nelson taught:
“In all of eternity, no one will ever know you or care about you more than He does.”
Think about that.
Nobody understands the whole story of you better than God.
Nobody sees your potential more clearly.
Nobody knows your wounds more completely.
Nobody is more invested in your eternal future.
And nobody knows better what Jesus Christ can make of your life.
Sometimes our circumstances make us think we have evidence that God forgot us.
The prayer is unanswered.
The loneliness lasted longer than expected.
The problem came back.
The blessing has not arrived.
But circumstances do not always tell the whole truth.
Zion looked at her circumstances and concluded:
God forgot me.
God responded:
Look at My hands.
That is powerful.
When you wonder whether God has forgotten you, the answer may not always be found by looking around at what has or has not changed.
Sometimes you need to look at Jesus Christ.
Look at His life.
His sacrifice.
His wounds.
His Resurrection.
His invitation to come one by one.
His hands tell a different story than your fear does.
Your fear may say:
Nobody sees me.
His hands say:
I do.
Your fear may say:
I have been waiting too long.
His hands say:
I have not forgotten you.
Your fear may say:
I must not matter very much.
His hands say:
Look at what My love was willing to bear.
You may not understand everything happening in your life.
You may still have a wall.
But you have not disappeared from heaven.
Scripture
“The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.”
—Isaiah 49:14
“Yet will I not forget thee.”
—Isaiah 49:15
“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”
—Isaiah 49:16
Reflection
Have you ever felt forgotten by God?
What circumstances made you feel that way?
What “wall” is continually before you right now?
How would it change the way you face that wall if you truly believed it was continually before God too?
What does the Savior’s willingness to retain the wounds in His resurrected body teach you about His love and sacrifice?
When have you received a quiet reminder that God knew exactly where you were?
Today’s Challenge
Write these words somewhere you will see them today:
“Yet will I not forget thee.”
Put them on your phone.
In a notebook.
On your mirror.
Inside your scriptures.
Then identify one “wall” that is continually before you.
Instead of asking only for the wall to disappear, tell Heavenly Father honestly how it feels to stand in front of it.
Then remember:
It is in front of Him too.
Christ-Centered Thought
Jesus Christ did not rise from the tomb without evidence of what He had done for us.
He kept the wounds.
Those wounds were once instruments of suffering.
Now they are also evidence of victory.
The resurrected Savior could point to His hands and say, in effect:
This is how far My love was willing to go.
So when you feel forgotten, look there.
Not because every question will immediately be answered.
Not because every wall will disappear.
But because the hands of Jesus Christ settle one question that fear keeps trying to reopen:
Does He care about me?
Yes.
You may feel forgotten.
You are not forgotten.
You may feel unseen.
You are not unseen.
You may feel as though heaven has gone quiet.
Quiet is not absence.
The Savior knows you personally.
He invites people to Him one by one.
That includes you.
Your wall is before Him.
Your life matters to Him.
And when you need evidence that He remembers you:
Look at His hands.
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