Sunday, June 7, 2009

Scars on the Outside

What if all of our emotional scars showed up on the outside of our body, instead of on the inside? What if every time you stab someone in the back, a scar appears on them physically? What if every time you hurt someone with your words, a scar appeared on their face? What if every time you withheld love or affection from a loved one, you could physically see the decay in their heart? What if every time you were selfish and it caused pain for someone else, a scar appeared on their arms? What if every time you intentionally ignored someone who was hurting, a scar appeared on their legs? What if your name were to appear beside the scar?

What about your own internal emotional hurts and scars? If we see someone with an outward scar or deformity of some sort, we want to hear their story of both the injury and the recovery. If we have a scar on our face from a dog bite or a scar on our arms from a burn accident, we tell people. We will tell anyone who will listen about how we survived the attack or how the pain felt when we got burnt. So why don't we want to tell others about the healing power of Jesus Christ? Why don't we tell our testimony over and over again so that others might know? If our unhealed and unattended emotional scars showed up on the outside of our bodies, would we do something about it? Would we seek healing? Or would we continue to allow them to fester and infect the rest of our being? If we could see others emotional scars, would we have more compassion? If we found our scars and the scars of others on the outside of our bodies, would we find ourselves seeking to be more like Jesus?

So what if our scars were on the outside?

2 comments:

Jesusistheparty! said...

Wow! Loved this profound post. I found your site from the LPM blog and liked your comment on the joys of "empty-nesthood." My husband and I are EN's and although the first year was a total adjustment period, we are now embracing and loving our alone time. Back to your post--interesting b/c we know that God sees every wound and if we really cared, maybe He would reveal more to us. Sounds like you care! Also this post reminds me of the Brandon Heath song, "Give Me Your Eyes." Love, joy and peace, Dana

Jeanette said...

If our scars were on the outside, I think we would view each other much closer to the way God does. But before becoming a scar, the hurt would be a gaping wound. And what do we do with wounds? Cover them up with a band-aid for protection during healing, so nothing creates further damage. While this can be good, I sometimes forget to take the band-aids off! If they were on the outside I would have someone rip those suckers off for me :)