The image of the risen Christ with wounds in his hands and his side reminds us when we suffer that so did our God; when we cry out in loneliness, so did our God. When we feel abandoned and alone, we remember that Christ hung on a cross and yelled for us, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We don’t have a God who stands at a distance but rather one who entered fully into the reality of our pain. So when we suffer, we know that Christ can say, “I’ve been there, and I have the wounds to prove it.” Christ’s scars become part of our story, and our scars become a part of God’s story in our lives. The scars of Christ become scars of hope as we deal with our own wounds in life. It seems there are some scars we love to show off, and there are others we want sewed up as neat as possible so that no one ever knows. Yet scars, whether visible to the eye or not, are something we all have in common -- something everyone shares. We all have experienced pain, both physically and emotionally, in our lives. Yet we are so often reluctant to share them with one another.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 23:59:57 +0000