God, the Bible, and the Christian Life

His fingerprints are everywhere.

When God made the world, he didn’t leave us completely devoid of any clues about him. The indescribable beauty of the ocean. The ineffable immensity of the night sky. The way music alights upon your whole person. These all point to something bigger and better that we’re always looking for, even when we don’t know we’re looking for it. We keep stumbling on God’s fingerprints.

You haven’t erased his fingerprints from your soul. Let’s face it: even though the term might seem stuffy and awkward, the inner you that nobody else sees is a theologian. You are living in the wake of all the questions you’ve ever asked yourself about life, the world, how we got here, and where we’re headed. Every time that you get angry in all the right ways when you see injustice, you’re doing theology. When you choose to stop thinking about your shortcomings because it’s just too heavy and too dark a thought, you’re reacting to the conscience that still has God’s fingerprints all over it from when he placed it inside you.

Have you ever looked at your own fingerprints? Have you ever examined those grooves on the pads of your fingers? Nobody else has those fingerprints. That’s you. You have an impact right wherever you are in your own way, leaving your own fingerprints on the lives you touch.

The Son of God had human fingerprints. (How’s that for some deep theology?) Jesus showed up in our world not to observe, not even to condemn. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And what makes Jesus not just a historical figure but the world’s main character is that he left a bunch of gracious and true fingerprints.

Jesus didn’t have to forgive sins. Jesus didn’t have to give all his children the same baptismal entrance into the family. Jesus didn’t have to give us the promise that he would keep giving to us his broken body and spilled blood. Jesus didn’t have to show us throughout the Bible that he sees us the way nobody else does. Jesus didn’t have to protect his church from every attack that’s been made against it. Jesus didn’t have to give you a better way to live until he takes you to be with him forever. Jesus didn’t have to die on the cross for your sins.

But all this he would do, and gladly, for you. The Son’s fingerprints had the Father’s promise of salvation etched into every line—and not just the intent of the promise, but the delight he took in carrying it out. Think of Jesus looking at his own fingerprints, on a body destined for death and resurrection—and smiling. You make him smile.

God is real. His fingerprints are all over the Bible, and this without smudge or erasure—completely flawless. God’s fingerprints are all over the Christian life, as we take him at his word and discover again and again who this person is that calls himself Love, who wants to spend now and eternity with us.