Every time my husband and I travel outside the country, I am struck by something that crosses all cultural barriers. Graffiti. It’s everywhere. It’s in every country I’ve ever been to and in every language. City walls. Bridges. Trains. Mountainsides. Oak trees in parks declare the undying love of many a young couple, outlined with a heart for good measure.
But … why? Why do we mark up monuments and nature with our puny scribblings? I think it’s because we want the world to know that “[Insert your name] was here.” I think we all want to leave a mark, a lasting proof that we walked this earth. We traveled here. We were in love here. We truly lived and left a legacy, if only on a city underpass.
Not temporary like graffiti
Leaving something behind to prove our existence is important to us. We recognize we are on this earth for a short time, and we are afraid we won’t be remembered. That our accomplishments, our life stories, our very selves will be forgotten. So we scratch our initials into wood or metal or stone. We yearn for something lasting and meaningful. We were made for something more than this temporary world.
God created us to feel this, and he constantly points us to the lasting and the meaningful, the deep and the beautiful:
- The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1–4)
- For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
God was here. God is here. His mark—his legacy—is magnified in vistas all over the world. This is what is called the natural knowledge of God. Our heavenly Father created us with a deep need for more, for forever.
Jesus’s graffiti
But here’s the crazy thing: God didn’t just create it all and then step away. When we messed up this perfect creation, he already had a plan for our rescue. He sent his Son. Jesus entered time and space, and he left a bigger mark than any of our sad little graffiti scratchings ever could.
Jesus came to live a perfect life here. He died on a cross for our sins, and he wrote his name on our hearts. He claimed us as his own. Revelation 22:4 says that “they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” Jesus didn’t scratch his initials into a Jerusalem overpass. He put his graffiti on us! To mark that he was here. To leave a lasting legacy in us. To change our hearts and make us his dear children.
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13–14)
The apostle Paul wrote the previous verses, and he hardly took a breath when he wrote them. And they are just the ending of one of the longest sentences in any epistle ever … way too long to graffiti onto a bridge. He couldn’t pick up his pen because this was too important: We are marked in Christ with a seal, something a king would do to prove he was there and the one making the declaration of truth. This is legit. We are legitimate children of God. We are his.
Leave your own graffiti
Now we, too, can leave our mark here. We can point others to Christ, leave a legacy of telling others of his love and pass it down to our children and our grandchildren.
These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6–9)
We are given permission to graffiti everything! To tell others that Jesus was here. God is here. We can see it all around us and in his Word. And we can’t keep this to ourselves. Leave your mark.
