For quite some time now my wife has talked about getting a tattoo and is encouraging me to get one as well. Unfortunately I’m much more picky than she about what I’m going to have permanently etched onto my body. I want something that means something to me. Well, a couple weeks back I got to thinking about about the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that says And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (NIV). I thought it would be cool to come up with some sort of tattoo representing this. This thought came to me while at work so it didn’t take long for me to forget about it. Then, tonight at church, my Pastor said something and I remembered thinking about this.
So I started doodling a bit trying to figure some way to intertwine the letters of the words or something. This evening I started looking online to see what the commonly accepted symbols of faith and hope were (yes, I already knew the symbol for love). As best as I can find, the symbol for faith is the cross and the symbol for hope is a dove (which I could have sworn was the symbol for peace, but what do I know?).
Now I’m trying to figure a way to use a heart, a cross, and a dove in a single tattoo without it looking feminine. I’ve also glanced over the translations into Latin and Japanese but I’m still not coming up with anything that’s really striking me right. Then, to add to my quandary, while looking around I found that water, fire, and vines all hold special meaning, which sounds cool as well.
Maybe I can have a dove wrapped in a vine that’s on fire and… no, a heart with a cross on top, wrapped in a vine with a dove flying overhead with a bucket of water. Or maybe a dove on fire… or maybe not. Maybe a dove taking a bath while a vine catches on fire… or maybe a dove sitting on a cross that is surrounded by water and it’s all enclosed in a heart with vine holding it above some flames… or maybe… maybe I need some sleep. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. What ever I decide, Soli Deo Gloria.
