By Kelly Mellen, Director, Making Things Right
Recently, I had my first ever professional headshots done and in some of those I wore one of our new MTR t-shirts. My photographer friend wanted a shot of me that showed my Pride bracelets with the t-shirt and in that photograph you can very clearly see my first tattoo which is an infinity cross.
A tattoo always tells a story. Sometimes it might be as simple as “walked into a shop and chose something off the flash sheet”, but sometimes the story resonates deeper. For many years I wanted to get a tattoo and I wanted it to be of significance to me. When I saw an infinity cross design, I knew that was it! It took me quite a while to get around to doing it, but in April 2022 my best friend Terri and I went together and got matching infinity cross tattoos. Our tattoo artist designed the ones we wanted for us and it’s been a treasured piece of art for me since.
The infinity cross reminds me that God’s love is truly infinite. His love has no beginning and no end. And what I find to be really encouraging is that we genuinely cannot even begin to truly fathom the enormity of God’s love. We are all held within that vast love, more so than we can ever begin to comprehend. Isn’t that incredible? I think so. And, it also reminds me that when parameters are put around God’s love, that does a disservice to the magnitude of Him. When we realize that God has an all encompassing love, we simply have to realize that is big enough, merciful enough and grace filled enough to include all people.
Some of us were exposed to an evangelical leaning that taught (and still teaches) that LGBTQ+ people are somehow outside the realm of God’s love. That kind of stigma has been taught and ingrained for far too long in some Christian culture and it breaks my heart. That rhetoric attempts to reduce the love of God to something finite, but our God is bigger than that. I believe with all my heart that God created this world and the people within it with beautiful diversity and His love for every one of us is infinite, never limited. This is the kind of faith I live and the kind of faith that propels the work of Making Things Right.
If you need a reminder today that you are held within God’s love, please let this message from a woman with an infinity cross tattoo remind you that God’s love knows no limitations. YOU are loved…right where you are, just as you are, forever.
