Scars

The self-healing mechanisms of the human body astound me. I’m no scientist, and I get over my head in a two-inch puddle when it comes to understanding the chemistry and biology involved just in blood clotting and skin repair. But that doesn’t keep me from being in awe of it. As many cuts, scrapes, bruises and worse that my kids have endured, most of them heal up without a trace. What a phenomenal design.

But sometimes those life incidents leave scars.

I have a scar on each of my arms.

The one on my right arm is what’s left after an episode of shingles when I was 11. The painful blisters at the ends of the nerves went away in time. But most of the scars didn’t. I can still hear another student curiously blurting out in front of the class to my mortification, “What’s that on your arm?!” The scars have faded some. But they remind me. They remind me of a broken world where disease exists and kids get sick. Where undeserved things happen to us and even bring shame. Where we deal with negative stress that wasn’t part of the original design.

The scar on my left arm is a little different. I did it to myself.

I went hiking with three friends one summer in the mountains of Washington. We had gone just above the snow line and were climbing off the trail on some rocks. One guy decided it would be fun to squat down on his haunches and slide on his feet down the icy slope. The other two followed, laughing all the way.

I wasn’t so graceful.

It was a mercy that I didn’t go over the cliff. Somebody got in my path and stopped my out-of-control tumble a few feet before I would have gone over a serious drop. I was thankful to escape with a scratched-up arm. And a scar.

That one reminds me that choices have consequences. You know the old saying our parents used about following somebody over a cliff. When I look at the even bigger picture of why I was in Washington to begin with, I probably shouldn’t have been there. It was a mixture of motives, both noble and self-serving. I am reminded of my own failures when I think of that scar from 30 years ago.

I see the scars on my arms and remember my broken world and my own sin and all the ramifications of both.

My extended family has a piece of property that belonged to my grandfather. The land has seen its share of trauma just in our generations. Who knows what else has happened there in the course of human history? We wanted this land to fulfill God’s purposes and to function in whatever capacity God imagined in His heart for this corner of the world.

In the first few chapters of Genesis, we learn that it was the sin of mankind that brought a curse on the created earth to begin with. Though this was a new application for us of that truth, we decided to pray for our land. Dealing with any sin of our own or our forefathers that had affected our little piece of property seemed a reasonable place to start.

One day my brother and I were on site and came to a sandy area where the grass never grew. It looked like a scar. In something I can’t fully describe, I felt a sense of grief and trauma. Had something terrible happened here? Who knows. We simply petitioned God to cleanse any sin affecting this land and bring healing to it. It was an out-of-the-box experience from any Sunday school class I’ve ever been in, but we did it anyway and wondered if anything would change with the land.

Three years later I stood on that same spot, curiously checking for grass.

There’s still a scar.

I started talking to the land. (Now before you dismiss me as “off my ever-loving rocker,” you probably talk to your dog, so why not.)

I told the land—and myself—what I knew about some pretty significant scars. When Jesus died, He had been beaten and whipped within an inch of His life before He even walked to Calvary. If we don’t shudder to imagine the scene, we aren’t picturing it accurately. Yet when He walked out of the tomb three days later, His body was whole. Mary would not have confused Him for a gardener if He had looked like an assault victim. When He greeted the disciples, they didn’t say, “Are you OK?” They fell at His feet and worshipped a fully alive and completely whole, utterly victorious Savior.

But when Jesus appeared to Thomas, He showed Him the scars in His hands and feet. Every other contusion and laceration from that horrendous ordeal was forever gone. Why did He choose to keep these particular scars?

So we would remember.

So all heaven and earth for all eternity would remember.

Jesus paid our debts in full and has the scars to prove it. Jesus made a new covenant for us, the Bible says, in His own blood, and He has the scars to prove it.

When a broken world overwhelms me. When my failure is squarely in my face. When the enemy accuses me before the Righteous Judge relentlessly, Jesus can without a word show all of heaven why I am forgiven. He bears in His body the marks of a settled reality lest anyone forget. Loved and forgiven, they testify. He has the scars to prove it.

Thomas recognized the risen Christ by the scars He kept.

Those scars are not marks of shame. They speak of love and covenant and remembrance.

I told the land that if it chooses to keep its scar, let it also be for remembrance of the great Love that came to reconcile ALL things to the Father.

Have you ever heard little boys brag to each other about who got the biggest scar, as though it were a badge of heroism to wipe out on your bicycle? “Well, look at mine.”

Our scars may remind us of our falls and our fallen world. But the sins we committed and the ones others committed against us are not more than the blood of Jesus can handle.

They were stupid. They were wrong. They were a ridiculous affront to the love and perfection of God. That my choices would require such a costly shedding of perfect Blood lays me low.

But they are paid in full. I hear Him say, “Look at Mine.”

Scars tell a story. But if they speak only of brokenness, we have not finished the narrative. The story ends with Resurrection. Restoration. Life. We are keeping the scars for now so there will be no forgetting the wonder of His love and the power of the empty tomb.

I see my scars, and I remember His.