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Every Scar a Story by Phil

My leg hurts. No, it's not muscle fatigue from marathon running (ha) or even arthritis from my advanced age. The source of my pain is a rather large gash from a walk-by collision with a sharp screw at calf level. Even after it heals and stops hurting, I'll probably be left with a scar to commemorate the encounter. It will join a whole collection of reminders of my past I carry around on my skin, some from accidents, some from blunders, and one from a procedure that saved my life. Each scar stirs a memory of a fateful moment in my life.

For instance, take the matching scars on my ankles from the time I was attacked by a cross at a church in Iowa. I was clearing the stage for a Christmas concert when a huge brass cross toppled off a table and took a nosedive right for my feet. The cross was fine, my ankles not so much.

Or the collage of scars on my knees from bicycle crashes as a kid. I loved the freedom of wind whipping through my hair (this back in the days before safety awareness when no one wore helmets or seatbelts and my dad would pump gas in the car with a cigarette dangling from his lips. It's amazing I'm still here!) I rode that bike hundreds of miles and from time to time a patch of loose gravel would bring me to my knees - literally.

Then there's the scar on my upper thigh from when I was five and spilled a pot of boiling coffee on my legs. We were on vacation in Florida, but instead of beaches, I remember the bandages from third degree burns covering most of me from the waist down. That's the reason I still don't like coffee to this day!

The first scar I received resides to the right and above my belly button. It is from a surgery to open the muscle between my stomach and small intestine when I was just a few days old. (From the struggle I've had maintaining my weight all my life, I think they may have opened it a bit too much.) My most recent trip to the emergency room is recorded in a scar where I tried to remove my left index finger with my drill press, (I wouldn't recommend this.)

Moving on up, there is a scar just under my eyebrow from an encounter with an unforgiving chair when I was a toddler. Several years later and a few inches farther north, there's a nice little scar in my hairline from a fall on an overturned plow on my grandparent's farm. And if you look really close you can see what appears to be a wrinkle but is actually a scar right between my eyebrows from running into a doorframe after my cataract surgery. Wait a minute, three head injuries? That explains a lot.

Other than a few when I was really young, each scar brings back vivid memories of the events from which it resulted. This is probably my brain saying, "Hey idiot, don't do that again!" When time has erased the pain and specific details start to fade, some of these scars bring associated memories that make me smile - time spent on Grandpa's farm, riding my bike around my childhood neighborhood, concerts in churches across the country... even more recently, time spent creating treasures in my wood shop.

I'm sure when Jesus sees the nail scars on his hands, he can remember the agony of that horrible day - the crown of thorns piercing his forehead, the rough timber of the cross cruelly rubbing the raw flesh of his scourged back, the struggle for each breath. But I wonder if when he looks at those scars, he also thinks of you. In Isaiah 49:16, God says, "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." The NLT translates this as "I have written your name on the palms of my hands." His scars aren't the result of an accident, they are there by choice. Jesus chose us over His own pain and suffering. We are the reason he had to die - to pay the price for our sin. There are no greater sinners than each of us, and no greater Savior than Jesus.

We all have scars, and stories to go with them. I've heard it said that scars are a reminder that no matter what we've been through, we're still alive. When you look at your scars, remember another set on the hands and feet of our Savior. Because He lives again, we have forgiveness, hope, victory over sin, and the promise of life with Him that will never end. That is a story I will never tire of telling.
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Saved by the scars,
Phil and Pam

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