SCARS Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Our exchange was brief. Less than sixty seconds. We’ll probably never see each other again. It was her scar that drew my attention. I’d just walked up to the counter to pay for my purchases at the convenience store. The first thing I actually noticed was her age. Why wasn’t she at home taking care of grandchildren or just enjoying her later years of life? Why was she still working? I doubt it’s because she was bored or just wanted to be around strangers all day coming and going in sixty-second spurts. Almost certainly, she needed the money. In a way, seeing her broke my heart and sobered me, too. If we live long enough, we all grow old. The time will come when we can’t work anymore even if we want to. It was the scar, though, that made me wonder. Beginning just below her neckline and then disappearing beneath her shirt was the all too noticeable evidence of open heart surgery. A childhood birth defect? Bad diet or lack of exercise? Smoking? What made the surgery necessary? She handed me my change without us ever exchanging so much as a glance of eye-to-eye contact. Yet, as I drove off, I thought about her scar, and other scarred people I’ve known, including myself. We all have scars. One dear friend of mine wore his for all to see. Burned in a tragic accident, his face and hands were scarred and will be forever. The first thing anyone will ever know first about him was that he was once badly burned. Most of our scars are hidden, though. Under our clothes, under our shyness or our withdrawal, underneath our unnecessary busyness, beneath our religion, behind our humor or tears – simply hidden. To talk about them directly is too painful for most. To recall their meaning demands reliving what scarred us as though we were just being scarred. So – we keep them hidden – don’t talk about – don’t even tell Jesus about. Which is the saddest part. Jesus sees our scars whether we’re fully dressed or naked before him. Jesus sees through the clothing of humor or religion or whatever we’ve used to hide them. It’s a sad testament to human shallowness that we see scars as a sign of shame. The apostle Paul spoke of scars as signs of character – that what wounded him only made better of him (2 Corinthians 12). Jesus knows our scars. We don’t have to apologize to Jesus for our scars or the tears the memory of the scarring brings. Jesus loves me this I know, including my scars hidden below. We should love Jesus. We should serve Jesus. We should be faithful to Jesus. The thing is – it’s really hard to fully do any of those as long as we keep our scars hidden from him because we have never grasped how much Jesus loves us, scars and all. A German hymn from 1876 contains these words, as true as the day they were first penned. “Are you worried, are you heavy hearted? Tell it to Jesus. Tell it to Jesus. Do the tears flow down your cheeks unbidden? Tell it to Jesus. Tell it to Jesus. Do you fear the gathering clouds of sorrow? Tell it to Jesus. Tell it to Jesus.” OK. Maybe the words are outdated a tad but the meaning is not. Those words might not fit in a tweet but there’s rarely a day those words won’t fit. The scars that worry me the most are the ones I’ve never talked about – to anyone – not even Jesus. I sometimes wonder if others can see the scars I try to keep hidden.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 11:45:38 +0000
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