Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15)

In December 2001, close to the time of the first IPC gathering near Ground Zero in New York, I was arriving with a team of prayer facilitators for a national prayer initiative in Monrovia, Liberia. As I entered the hotel entrance, a man selling mahogany wood carvings of all kinds, mostly of various African animals, excitedly handed me a different-looking one. “This one’s for you,” he proclaimed, no doubt anticipating he would make yet another sale to a foreign tourist.

The beautifully sculpted reddish wood depicted the large hand of God reaching protectively over the head of a small child and as I looked at it, I sensed the Lord was speaking to me again. On the same trip, I had become convinced that He was calling us in the international prayer movement to give special place to children and youth in the various initiatives that my colleagues and I were organizing around the world. This seemingly accidental reach for one of hundreds of different wood sculptures became one of many subsequent confirmations to me that the Lord was serious about this new focus.

After that time, both in World Vision International, the organization I served during those years, and in the wider Children in Prayer movement that I discovered had begun some years before, we began to prioritize the involvement of children and youth in various initiatives, both internationally and in nationally. Each time, we wondered at how God used the kids as His “secret weapon” in so many ways. They prayed for nations in conflict and suffering, with ambassadors at the United Nations, as well as for political leaders when we got that opportunity. Always, the Lord showed up in moving experiences so that we have been increasingly learning that tri-generational prayer is the way to go for the future-- adults, youth and children praying together for their nations and our world.

This became the guiding philosophy that led us during the World Prayer Assembly in 2012, in which tens of thousands of young people participated. Now, in the IPC and under the leadership of Pastor Jerome Ocampo from the Philippines, we are working with a team of international youth leaders to plan the World Youth Prayer Assembly. Supported by the prayers of children and the advice of the older generation, the WYPA will be called “UPrising” (United Prayer Rising) and will be held in Seoul, South Korea, July 26-30, 2016. Please see http://www.unitedprayerrising.com for more information.

Getting back to that 14 year-old Liberian wood carving. A couple weeks ago, it was my joy to present it to Father Anton Cruz and the Royal Kids, a wonderful ministry to thousands of orphans and children from poorer families in India and now other nations. As I was preparing to make the presentation that evening in honor of their 25th anniversary, I reflected again on the verse that was so roughly imprinted on the bottom of the statue- Isaiah 49:15. God’s reassuring words to His ancient people Israel in the midst of their great hardships that His love for them would go beyond the strongest of all human affection, that of a mother for her nursing babe, hit me powerfully. However, this time, I was especially struck by the next verse that I had hardly noticed before—“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” Suddenly, I realized that the hands of God Isaiah was describing were those stretched out for all of us on the cross of Calvary. The engraving was carried out with sharp iron nails in the sensitive palms of God the Son. Our faces and very lives were then and are now still engraved on His hands. You and I whether as a child or older adult will never be forgotten no matter what hard times we endure. When the Lord looks at His hands, He sees each of us in them- His exceedingly precious and beloved children. Whether we are cognizant of it or not and no matter what befalls us, we are always encompassed by those nail-engraved yet all-powerful hands, guiding us through life and into eternity.

John Robb