Scars
As many of you know, our 14-year-old daughter, Brynna, has many special needs and special circumstances.
The other day as I was plugging in her G-tube to give her a feeding I noticed her tummy scar. When she was just a baby, she had to have surgery. That day she had four or five different procedures performed at one time, leaving a scar several inches long from her sternum to just above her belly button.
She also has a crescent-shaped scar under her left shoulder blade where she had heart surgery while still in the NICU. When I look at her precious face, I see a few more scars there on her lips and nose where her cleft lip and palate and missing nostril were repaired.
She’s been on a long and difficult journey. No one ever thought she’d still be with us, but here we are about to celebrate her 14th Thanksgiving. People often see scars as a negative thing, cover them up with tattoos or clothing. I don’t see them that way.
To me, scars tell stories; stories of risks taken, hardship endured, a life lived in the face of possible tragedy. Scars remind us where we’ve been and can often help us remember where we are going.
So it was with Thomas in John 20:27 when Jesus appeared behind closed doors and said,
“Put your finger here and look at my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Don’t be faithless, but believe.”
Thomas gets a bad rap for “doubting”, but I promise you my skeptical spirit would have been right there with him.
Jesus’ scars told a story, too. They told a story of love, pain, suffering, shame, and glory. They told a story of hope, comfort, promises kept, and a future secured. They told THE story of all time, the story of Jesus’ promise, life, death, resurrection, and promised return. They told the story that sometimes obedience leads to scars on its way to glory. They knew this really was the Messiah, and they knew it by His scars.
We often shortchange what happened when the eternal God-man took on flesh and came to carry the weight of the sins of all humanity. He, in complete unity and peace with the two other members of the Trinity, chose to take on the flesh of His own creation with all of its trappings, hardships, and hangups except He didn’t have the sinful nature we inherited from Adam. The rest, though, was all on him.
The striking part to me is that he bore the MARKS of sin, the temptation, and eventually the penalty, having never once committed a sin at all. Further, He took the literal marks of the cross, the stripes by which WE are healed, and carried them with Him forever. He took His scars; the scars that one day will tell you and I the same story they told Thomas.
Jesus didn’t just come to earth in the flesh then return to heaven in the spirit, leaving His flesh behind to return to his existence as it was before. No, His decision to take on flesh was an eternal, forever decision. His flesh, and His scars, will remain with him always. Even in His resurrected body, whatever that may be, He carried the marks, the wounds, the stripes of our redemption.
We see this again in Revelation 5:5-6 when the elder tells John
“Do not weep. Look, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Then I saw one like a slaughtered lamb standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders.
Forever. For all eternity. Without end. That’s how long the scars of Jesus will testify to the hope, redemption, glory, pain, suffering, and shame He endured for you and for me.
They will forever proclaim the unending love He has for us as they herold His glorification and resurrection, shouting to the furthest reaches of the universe the specatular glory of the resurrected King.
Don’t be ashamed of your scars. Let them tell their story.
