Scars – Dull Blades and High Places (Pt I)

Oddly, three different people used that word in ONE DAY and I knew the Lord was leading me to examine this more deeply… scars.

1. MORNING – A lifetime remembrance
It all started in the morning as I was listening to a message about God’s healing power while I was exercising. Someone mentioned the scars that we carry with us for a lifetime. Then I caught two very well-known pastors discussing the importance of humility, as I showered and dressed.

“There’s no room for pride,” one said emphatically.

“It’s God who works in people’s hearts,” the other agreed. They were both so genuinely humble about their televised successes, it drew me in. These are just ordinary men, I noted.

The older of the two was talking about how easy it is to be lifted up on a Sunday when God moves powerfully through the crowds and people are getting saved. “It’s easy to think it’s you doing it,” he laughed. “But pride is the death of the ministry,” he stressed. “God will not share his glory with another.”

“Oh yes,” the other pastor added, “the Lord showed me years ago, never forget who you are, without me.”

A few seed thoughts were planted so deeply I didn’t even process them until they were triggered, unexpectedly, during a phone call a few hours later.

2. AFTERNOON – In the eyes of love
One of my co-teachers from the corrections ministry called to discuss scheduling. In the course of the conversation, as usually happens, we side tracked a couple times, but I was truly surprised when she mentioned her son’s girlfriend.

Louis has a sweet girlfriend who was in a car accident many years ago, and ever since, she has had a scar on her face. It was Louis’s description that moved me and shook me back to the morning’s thoughts.

“You know how some people have a scar and it makes them seem ugly?” he asked his mom. “Well, her scar just enhances her beauty somehow. It makes her features look even more striking and beautiful,” he marveled.

Wow, to be loved like that! Isn’t it marvelous how, in the eyes of the one who truly loves, the markings of failure or the wounds from the past can be so totally accepted, even adored? I know the Lord loves us like that! In His eyes we are completely and freely loved, just as we are, scars and all.

3. EVENING – In my own skin
That evening, I was able to witness the working of God in the Bible study with the girls in lock-up. On this occasion, it started with a girl breaking down in tears just as we hugged, and continued to prove the presence of God as we opened his word. It never ceases to amaze me when the Lord himself shows up and touches lives. What a privilege it is to wrap skin around his message and touch lives--especially, in Chrysallis House, a place for healing wounds and dealing with so many scars.

I left there and attended another study with friends in Holliston. We’re at the section of the book that discusses how God takes our sorrows and conforms us into the image of His Son. I suppose I shouldn’t’ have been surprised when one of the guys blurted out, “There’s always scars in relationships.”

Well, I almost fell off my chair that time. That’s the third time today someone’s mentioned scars! That was just the icing on the cake and I knew I had to serve this while it was hot out of the oven.

Okay God, what are you trying to say? What’s the meaning of scars? If you offer complete healing and your word says that you remove our sins as far as the east is from the west, then WHY, pray tell, do scars stay with us forever?


DULL BLADES AND HIGH PLACES
I glanced down at my hand where a curved white line reminds me of the time I was cutting a smoked pig leg with a dull knife. The blade hit a bone and came back the second time to hit my own finger, to the bone. My stomach flipped over as I realized I had whacked my own hand. My head felt suddenly lighter as blood drained from my face and started rushing out the gaping lip of flesh. Even today when I think of it, my stomach goes queezy.

Then I looked down at the biggest scar on my body. Oh yeah, it still shows plainly, even after all these years. On my left leg there remains a shiny four-inch reminder of my youthful exuberance. Oh, the folly that moved me to jump off a bridge at the age of twelve! Well, I wasn’t trying to kill myself, but I did get hurt pretty badly.

I was with my big brother Steve and we did it just to be funny. The road to our school passed right under the Mass Pike and so, out of curiosity one day, we climbed up the side of the bridge and watched the traffic speeding by. Then Steve had an idea, and though his natural God-given brilliance surpasses most people on the planet, this was not a good one.

“Let’s pretend we’re going to commit suicide!” he said with a laugh.

“WHHHHYYYY would we want to do that?”

“It’ll be funny. People driving by will think we’re jumping all the way down to the street level, but we’ll just land on the slope.” He always loved the comic angle.

“I don’t know, Steve,” I hesitated.

“Look, it’s just a grassy hill from here to the street,” he reasoned. “I’ll go first!”

Why is that big brothers come up with hair-brained plans like this? But more, why is that kid sisters follow them? Steve climbed up on the rails at the highway level on the overpass and waited while people in the cars caught sight of him. He swung his arms around and made a show of it before leaping down.

Then it was my turn and I still can’t believe I did this. I stood up there, swung my arms, and leaped down onto the soft grass. Trouble is, when I stood up I realized something wasn’t right.

“Look!” Steve’s face changed expressions. “What did you do?” he asked. I looked down at my left leg and realized that my jeans were torn all the way up past the knee. “You just ruined a perfectly good pair of jeans,” he huffed.

But as he was saying that, I realized it wasn’t just a tear to the cloth. I carefully lifted the denim flaps to the sides and we saw a long gash on my leg as well. It was sort of flapped open also, with white flesh exposed. Then the bright red started running freely from my knee down.

“You must have landed on glass or a nail!” Steve hollered.

I was shocked. “I didn’t even feel it!” I said in amazement. But young and stupid as we were, we did think pretty fast just then. I took off my socks and tied them tightly around the wound.

“We have to run home now!” Steve urged. “Quick!” and we started running the half mile hill to the house.

I ended up with 14 stitches and an angled scar to remind me that sometimes we are stopped by the unseen obstacles. Danger lurks beneath the surface. And yes, you shouldn’t always listen to big brothers. Sooner or later, we have to think for ourselves.

Yes, I have physical and emotional scars as well. And as a visual writer, a spiritual seeker, I am compelled to search out the meaning. I see scars and I want to remember the lessons. But it isn’t just as obvious as say, 'don’t use dull blades' and 'don’t leap off high places.' I feel God wants to say something far more significant…

(continued)