Henna

Henna is a temporary dye used by many Asian, African and Middle Eastern women to beautify their skin. I've seen it many times but never had it done myself -- until last month, when I participated in a birthday party with a henna/Indian theme!

Once applied to the skin, the design stays anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks. The picture above shows what my hand looked like immediately after the henna was applied. After it was dry I brushed off the dark stuff, and an orangey-red pattern remained. The photo below shows what it looked like about a week later.

Typically henna designs are just beautiful, intricate patterns with no real meaning. But Christians around the world are now using henna to share Bible stories! The patterns contain symbols to remind the wearer of certain aspects of the story.

The pattern on my hand illustrates the Biblical account of Jesus feeding 5,000 people using only five loaves of bread and two fish. If you look closely, you'll see two fish illustrations within the design. The five flowers represent the five loaves of bread, and the twelve dots on my fingers represent the twelve baskets full of food that were leftover after everyone had eaten. Pretty cool, huh?

One of my former teammates designed a booklet teaching people in the US how you can make the henna dye and draw your own designs. You can even host a henna party to draw henna on your friends, enjoy unique foods from henna countries, and learn about/pray for Muslim and Hindu women around the world. Click here to order the booklet.

You can also find more resources and information, including lots of henna patterns, here.