I watched The Passion of the Christ this week. It was the first time I really understood what type of torture Jesus endured.
It was hard to watch, to say the least.
Something stuck out to me, though, after watching it and then getting into scripture.
Just a few days after His crucification, Jesus appears to His followers after His resurrection.
From the sounds of it, He had changed significantly in appearance from a few days prior when He was nailed to the cross.
No broken bones, bruised or cut up body. No black eyes. He didn’t have a cast, or bandages on His body.
He wasn’t unrecognizable like He was days before, He was healed.
The thing I find so profound though, is that He kept a few of the scars.
“Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see...” -Luke 24:39
He didn’t need to, of course. He could have healed those scars right up.
But He kept the scars to show what He had overcome.
The scars were proof of the resurrection. The proof that God conquers.
The evidence of death defeated.
Friends, we don’t have those same scars as Jesus, but we do have our own scars that show our suffering.
Scars from accidents, scars from health issues and surgeries. Scars from carrying life within us.
Scars on our hearts from wounds of the past, and scars from the hurt and pain we’ve suffered.
They also tell a story about where we’ve been.
Our scars also show what we’ve overcome.
And our scars always point back to the scars that Jesus kept on His body, too.
They point back to the fact that He takes what is broken in our life, and resurrects it.
That’s what He does.
If you find yourself in a place where instead of a scar you have an open, gaping wound... know that He will bind that wound up.
And someday, when a scar is all that remains..
You can look at it to remember the Healer.
The one who takes the broken and redeems it.
The one who pulls us out of the pit and sets us on a rock.
The one who has victory in the end, every time.
Our scars can remind us what Jesus did on the cross, and what He still does today.
~Kelli Bachara, The Unraveling Blog
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