One of the TV shows that my wife and I love to watch is Arrow, based on the comic book character the Green Arrow of DC comics. The main character, Oliver Queen, was the partying-do-whatever-I-feel-like-doing son of billionaire Robert Queen. The playboy’s life changes forever when he ends up being shipwrecked on a remote island in the Pacific. In the five year period he was on the island, 20% of his body was burned and scared over that time learning to survive the dangers of the island. When he finally returned home after being presumed dead along with his father, he is not the same man he was. He is determined to make up for the pain he had caused and to keep a promise he made to his dying father to atone for Robert’s sins, being involved in a corrupt group of businessmen who were planning to destroy a poor section of Sterling City known as the Glades. He becomes the vigilante known as the Arrow.
One of the facets of the story as it unfolds is Oliver trying to come to terms with what happened to him on the island; it was not pretty as his scars reveal. Were they brands of shame that needed to be hidden? Were they signs of how broken and damaged he was? Or were they to be accepted as reminders of the challenges he had overcome and the lessons that he had learned that ultimately transformed him into the hero and “savior” (small “s”) that he had become?
All of us have scars. They may be clear marks on our body or hidden marks on our soul. We all need to decide how we come to terms with them. Do they define us, or do we define them? Do they make us sour and bitter or make us better and sweeter? Do they highlight our brokenness or show how God turns suffering on its head making us more like Him and able to help and encourage others who are hurting?
One of the things I have often wondered at is that Jesus’ resurrected body still bore the scars of His death. He was not ashamed of them. He did not feel the need to hide them. Rather, he bared them to His disciples, he invited them to look and to touch. They were the proof that He was indeed the Messiah, the Savior (with a capital “S”). The scars were proof of the dear price He had paid, yes, but more than that they were the proof that He was the Son of God, that the gospel was true, that forgiveness could be had, that death and the accuser had been defeated, that He was trustworthy in an ultimate sense, and that He was worthy of being loved with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
I think Jesus is the example of how God through His sovereign love and grace ultimately wants us to see our scars: as the marks that remind us of how awesome and complete a Savior Jesus is; that no pain is too great for Him to heal and that no one is too broken to be restored and made not only whole, but useful; and how we have been transformed into people who can carry that love, hope, and grace to the world, wherever we may be in it.
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 