There will be no scars

I went to an Emmaus gathering last week. One of the ministers who is part of the community gave a pre-communion devotion.

He talked about a friend of his who he went to visit one day. He walked into her house and didn't recognize her. She had been in a car accident (unknown to him). The airbag had deployed and left her face covered in abrasions. She looked terrible.

She explained to him that while the injuries looked bad, the doctor told her that she would eventually be just fine -- that in time, there will be no scars.

I'm reading a book by Max Lucado called In the Grip of Grace. Think about grace. Lucado says:

God justifies (makes perfect) then sanctifies (makes holy). God does what we cannot do so we can be what we dare not dream, perfect before God. He justly justifies the unjust.

It's grace. We don't deserve it. We have no reason to expect it or to anticipate it. We are sinful, and there is nothing we can do to change that. God can. God does. Lucado says that "the finished work of sin is to kill the sinner." God doesn't allow that. If we choose to say yes, then he rescues us from death, transforms us, and justifies and sanctifies us.

And those scars? All that sin does to us, all the pain, all the damage, all the scars, will be taken away. In a Sunday school class I was teaching, I was asked (and we discussed it in class) why Jesus kept the scars from his crucifixion after the resurrection. He could have had a perfect body. Why keep the scars? They were proof of who he was, for one thing. No one else has ever had scars from a crucifixion. I think they may serve as a reminder to him of what is was like to be human -- to bear pain and scars. Also, though, maybe it is a reminder to us -- he has the scars, so that we do not.

In time, there will be no scars.

Image: Trees and light in the sunshine one morning at the VA.