and you shall love

“Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”


Quite a few years ago, I learned about this Jewish prayer called Shema Yisrael (or just Shema). It incorporates a few different sections of scripture, including Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (above) which is one of my favorite passages in scripture. I just love the Old Testament, and as a Christian, this portion of the Bible contains one of the greatest commandments – to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength.

And you shall love…

Today, I did something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time – I got a tattoo. However, I didn’t want to get just any old tattoo. I wanted to get something meaningful. I’ve known for a while that I wanted a tattoo on my wrist, and that I wanted something in Hebrew. I originally thought about getting “adopted” because I am now an adopted child of God. However, I thought this might be a little tricky and hard to explain to others. As I started thinking more, I landed on the word “love.” Each day, I have to choose to love. It’s not always easy. Sometimes my natural inclination is to do the opposite of love. And I felt like having a tattoo of the word “love” might serve as a good reminder to daily choose to love. However, I only knew the translation for the noun form of love, not the verb. I had no idea how to translate it… So, I decided to settle on the noun form.

Two and a half hours before I was supposed to get my tattoo, things changed…

I got into an IM conversation with my friend Kristina, who was asking me about my tattoo. I told her that what I really wanted was the verb form of love, but didn’t know what version to use, and didn’t really like the look of the verb forms I had found. Kristina decided to help me out. Working at Elmbrook, she headed down to the resource library and sent me roughly 8 different pictures she’d taken of Hebrew bibles/texts. She sent me one image that had a translation for “and you shall love.”

I instantly fell in love with how it looked, and with the meaning behind it.

So, around noon today, Solid State’s rock star artist John tattooed “and you shall love” on my wrist. My favorite partners in crime - Kate Berumen and Lady Z - were there to witness the event.

I’m so excited by this phrase… and I love being able to share with people what it means, and why it’s there. Each day, I’m reminded to love God with everything in me – with my entire being. However, it doesn’t stop there… “and you shall love” also reminds me to continually choose to love those around me – to make the conscious choice to be more loving. It serves as a reminder that loving other is what’s expected of me.

Getting this tattoo today was so good on so many levels… I freaked out a bit at the size (it was a little bigger than I was imagining) and my freakishly pale skin makes it stand out quite a bit. But I love that it’s permanent. I love that later in the Shema, it says, “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand” and that’s sort of what I did today.

May this tattoo serve as a reminder to continually pursue God with my entire being, and to love those around me with the love of Jesus.