Thank God for Your Scars

I was in the fourth grade, it was recess time, and my classmates and I were playing a game of softball. Pat Murphy was at bat and I was on deck.

Pat had a bad habit. Every time he belted the ball, he threw his bat as he ran to first base.

This at-bat was no exception. Pat hit the ball to center field and let the bat fly. It hit me on the forehead with a violent crash, raising a huge lump.

A short time later, an EMS took me to the hospital. ER doctors looked me over and did some x-rays. You might not believe this, but the docs told my mother that everything inside my head was uninjured. Over the next few weeks, I suffered from black eyes, but that was almost all that happened as a result of my encounter with the thrown bat.

I say "almost" because forty-four years later, I do have one souvenir: A lump on my forehead. Even after we experience healing, there are often scars.

I heard a pastor once tell the true story of a woman who was having an affair, but knew she needed to end it. She loved her husband and her children. She had made a long-ago vow to be faithful and she couldn't live with the guilt or shame any longer.

As the pastor counseled her, she courageously broke off the affair. It really was courageous because it's hard for a woman to end it with a man who gives her all the attention that a lover, unencumbered by the challenges and the baggage that go with marriage, can provide.

The lover who didn't leave his socks on the Family Room floor, had never forgotten to pick up the gallon of milk after work, and gave her 100% of his attention when they were together seemed like the Prince Charming, the "soul mate," for whom she'd always yearned.

As she affected and lived with the aftermath of her breakup, the woman continued to meet with the pastor. "I know I did the right thing," she told him more than once. "I don't regret it." But sometimes, she confided, she missed her old lover. "And sometimes," she said, "it hurts like hell."

She was healed. She had turned away from her destructive sin. Her relationships with her husband and with the God Who cares about our marriages were restored. She had left the seeming certainties of a lover's undying attention to trust that an unseen God had a better plan for her. She'd found God's plan to be best. But, like the lump still on my forehead, the scars that went with breaking off her old intoxicating life will be with her for as long as she lives.

She had put herself completely at the disposal of the God made known in Jesus Christ so that the power of His crucifixion and resurrection could be reiterated in her living. A man named Paul writes about this in the New Testament: "...I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central...The life you see me living is not 'mine,' but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself to me. I am not going back on that" (Galatians 2:20-21, The Message).

God is willing to forgive our sins and give us joy from living His way. But, be warned: If we're genuinely following Him, the scars we incur will never go away.

They're the trophies of those who've grabbed the outstretched hand of a loving God.

They're the yellow lights blinking us to be cautious when we're tempted to go our own ways instead of God's.

Scars are often the gracious gifts of a loving God.