The Importance of Showing Your Scars

If this post looks familiar, it's because I wrote it when I first began the blog. I deleted it by accident while I was doing some blog-maintenance and could not place it in it's original location. Maybe someone needed to see it again.

In the movie "Jaws" there was a scene where three of the characters were sitting in the bottom of a boat, drinking beer and talking. The characters were Quint, Brody, and Hooper. Quint and Hooper had been fighting with each other throughout the movie because Quint thought Hooper was too soft, and Hooper thought Quint was a pain in the... back. Well, in this particular scene, the two men began to bond with each other by showing their various scars and sharing the shark stories behind them. One of them would show a scar on the leg and the other would show a similar scar on his leg. One of them had a scar on his hip, the other showed a scar on his head. You get the point. The quincher was when Hooper opened his shirt and pointed to a spot over his heart. "Mary Ellen Moffit," he slowly murmurs. "She broke my heart!"

There is something that I will always remember from that scene. Here were two people who really didn't like each other discovering that they had more in common that they originally believed. Sharing their scars with each other allowed them to relate to each other; thus causing their attitudes to change.

How can we as Christians show our scars? II Corinthians 1:3-7 states: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. (niv)

In II Corinthians , Paul was saying that we go through the trials of life so that we can help our brothers and sisters when they go through the same things. Have you ever been going through a tough stage in life, only to have someone you didn't expect to see tell you that you could make it because they had gone through the same thing? I recently shared a hardship with one of the members of my church. They smiled at me and let me know that they had gone through the same thing. They then told me to hang in there and know that God would bring me through it. And as I made my way through the hardship, I was encouraged by her testimony and felt better about my situation. She had shared her scar with me.

By definition, a scar results from the biologic process of wound repair in the skin and other tissues of the body. Thus, scarring is a natural part of the healing process. If that sounds really intelligent, it's because I got it from Wikipedia! Your scars remind you of the events that caused them. But more importantly, they remind you that you survived the event. By showing our scars to other believers, we let them know that we survived the trials and events of our lives. That will encourage others to keep trying, and keep healing. Who can you think of right now that would be encouraged by your testimony? Don't be afraid. You have your scars for a reason.

Peace and Love

Rev. Mike

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