Beautiful Scars?

There's a post floating around the internet lately which combats the view that babies ruin your body, arguing that really all those pounds, stretch marks, back pains and possibly caesarean scars are beautiful because they bring about the joy of motherhood. And I certainly agree that if your main reason for avoiding pregnancy is to avoid any physical scars associated with it, your priorities are a little off.

But the other day, I noticed my own stretch marks in the mirror. Mine don't come from pregnancy. To be honest, I don't know where they come from. Because they're on my back, I'd never really noticed them until shortly after my wedding when my husband pointed them out (he was a newbie--forgive him). Those scars come somehow from living life and they didn't produce any momentous joy that I'm aware of. Of course, I don't think about those marks most of the time. They're not visible to most people and they've never caused me any pain. But I know a lot of others with more serious scars. My husband has a nice long scar on his leg from major knee surgery last year. My father has a long scar down his chest from emergency quadruple-bypass surgery a few years ago. I have family and friends with scars left from mastectomies. There are the women whose stretch marks did come from pregnancy, but which only serve as a continual reminder of the baby they had to lay in the ground. And then there are the invisible scars that we all carry to some degree--whether they be from broken relationships, abuse, our own sin or catastrophic events outside our control. Live more than a couple years on this earth and you'll get yourself some scarring.

And unfortunately, most of these scars have no great beauty. The ones that come from time and growing older, the ones that come from pain and suffering, the ones that come from tragedy and trauma, the ones that remind us far more of our coming death than of new life. These scars need much more than an adorable baby to pacify them. While most of us can point to good things that came out of bad experiences, there are far too many scars that seem to have no purpose, that are part of the experience in living in a broken, fallen world. If our only hope for dealing with our scars is to somehow find the blessing inherent in them, we're in trouble.

But Jesus has scars, too. Do you ever think about that when you look at your own? Five scars left from an event far more traumatic than most of us could even imagine. And while there may be no comfort or hope to be found in what has come out of our own scars, there is great comfort and hope to be found in the outcome of Jesus' scars.

First off, his scars identify him with us: Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things... We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 2:14, 3:15) God knows what it is like to live life in this broken world; our scars are not foreign to him. He does not merely sit up in heaven observing our decay and sin and death as one who is above all that. He came down and lived as a man and suffered pain and violence and also all the "normal" physical issues of life. There is great comfort in knowing that that one we can run to with our scars is one who bears the scars of life himself.

But the comfort of knowing that someone else--even God--has been through what we have still doesn't give us any hope, unless there is more to it than that. And thankfully, there is. His scars don't just identify him with us, but they are the result of his winning battle against decay and sin and death and all that is wrong with this world, all the things that give us scars. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows... He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Whether your scars come from carrying a baby for 9 months, from life-saving surgery, from the horrible sins of others, from your own past sins, or from the unstoppable march toward earthly death that all of us participate in (or for that matter, those odd ones that leave no explanation to give your brand-new husband), take comfort in the fact that Jesus knows what scarring is like, and take great hope in the promise that Jesus' victory over sin and death at the cross has brought you new life, though we must wait to have it in full until he returns to make all things new.

Our scars are not beautiful... even those that come from pregnancy come because of the fallenness of this world. But Jesus' scars ARE beautiful, because they have secured for us eternal life that will not fade, in a new heavens and a new earth in which there will be no more scarring and every tear wept for the scars of this life will be wiped away by God himself.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus!