MARKED BY LOVE
I was only 5 when I learned how this broken world leaves ugly marks.
My new friend Tiffany was changing her church clothes when I saw how the world had melted the tender skin from her legs.
I looked away as she stepped out of her long skirt and quickly pulled her pants up to cover them.
“I played with a candle, and my nightgown caught fire,” she confessed with her face burning in shame. We spent the rest of the day trying to pretend it hadn’t happened.
A few years later, I received a scar of my own after shoving my hand through a glass in sudsy dishwater. Over time, the stitches dissolved, but the jagged line across my soul remained and throbbed, “So dumb, so careless."
Life inflicted more wounds on me, too - ones that no one saw. Still ashamed, I tried to cover them with a forced smile and an extra swig of denial -always moving, never stopping to look in the mirror. Because, deep down, I knew those scars marked me as someone that wasn’t worth knowing or loving.
Until one day, Jesus’ scars showed me I was wrong.
As King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus had every right to come out of the tomb unscathed and unmarked. Yet He chose to keep the wounds the world had pierced Him with - proof that He knew our pain.
Even today, He bears those scars and invites us to come close to search their depth, to probe fingers into the flesh that cried out in agony.
He calls the walking wounded to plunge hands where the sword pierced Him, where every drop of Who Jesus is was spilled out over everything we are not.
Yes, God’s divine love was poured through the fleshy wounds of His Only Son, and that love mixed with His blood contains the power to heal every gouge the world rakes across His children’s backs.
I still flinch when the world swings its fist, but I no longer bear the shame of its scars, for I have been marked by a love that covers them all - the unhidden, open wounds of Christ.
(Jesus said) “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”
John 20:27 MSG