April 24
DebDay 41: Scars that Teach
Cultures through history have regarded physical scars as evidence of experience, adulthood, even wisdom.
I once read where the plains Native-Americans so valued scars on the bodies of their fighting men, that young warriors would even cause scars on themselves in order to be seen as "real men." (I hope the ladies were exempt.)
This wasn't a slight burn on the arm from a smoking pot. Oh, no. Rather, they would hack off a finger or two, on each hand. (But always sure to leave a finger or two, so they could pull back a bow string.) Gruesome. And dumb.
No one today needs to go looking for scars. Scars come to us. The older someone lives (like me) the more scars one has to show. Not that everyone has the same scars, or that everyone has the same number or severity of scars, but we get scars all the same.
Not all scars are physical. Many can be emotional. Our memories can be scarred.
To live is to experience things and people, circumstances and relationships that leave scars. Not a question of if, but when.
Scars consistently ask one question: What will you learn from me?
Will this scar, or that other scar leave me angry, bitter, resentful, debilitated, self-protective? Or can this or that scar teach me something?
And if so, what?
I love the book of Habakkuk. It's the only Bible book I've preached in its entirety in one sermon. (Not as hard as it sounds.)
Habakkuk asks questions of God. God gives him answers, just not what Habakkuk expects to hear back. It's like God repeats back to Habakkuk what He said centuries before to a guy named Job.
But at the end, Habakkuk allows his scars to teach him.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 says, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the LORD, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places."
What did Habakkuk learn from his scars?
God has a purpose for every scar we gain.
And, if our scars teach us to hold God's hand much tighter than we would in the absence of those scars - then we have learned our lesson well.
Our experiences and thus our memories can really only result in one of two responses...
"How could you let this happen to me, God?"
-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau
