Unscarred

Those who fully enter the struggle of being human will not come out untouched. Some places in us will feel like bullet holes. There will be wounds left by failure, betrayal, loss, disappointment, and love. Perhaps this should not surprise us. Whatever happened in the life of Jesus will, in some measure, happen in ours. Why should his disciples expect to remain unscarred?

We sometimes imagine that faith makes us bulletproof, protecting us from failure, shipwreck, and heartbreak. But a life so carefully guarded may also become a life incapable of receiving love.

The illusion is that an unwounded life is a whole life.

It is not.

Scars may be the very places where grace has found its way in. They tell us that we have loved enough to lose, trusted enough to be disappointed, and followed far enough to discover that sorrow is part of the journey.

The question, then, is not how to live without wounds, but what kind of people our wounds are making us become. The unwounded life bears little resemblance to Jesus. He did not wear armor. He bore scars.