Heart Tracks - Sacred Wounds

"From now on, don't let anyone trouble me with these things. For I bear on my body that scars that show I belong to Jesus." Galatians 6:17...."Wounds become sacred when we give them to God." Ruth Graham

There are many certainties in life, and one of the most daunting is that we will not escape it without wounds. Oftentimes deep wounds, agonizing wounds, wounds that change the very course of our life. What that course turns out to be will be determined by what it is we do with our wounds.

I don't want to diminish the pain of anyone's wounding or loss. I certainly know the extent of my own. However, something I have observed, and fallen prey to myself, is our holding onto that pain and the wounding that accompanies it. It becomes something we don't want to let go. Someone said that we can get past that which we can't get over. That means that there is always a memory of the pain, but that we don't "live" there. It doesn't hold us captive. More, we can make a kind of idol of that wound, staying in that place emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes, even physically. I've always felt that Abraham's father, Terah, did this concerning the death of his son Haran. Terah had intended to take his family to the land of Canaan, but stopped at a village with the same name as his son, Haran. He never left. He never arrived to where it was he was supposed to go. That village became an idol to his loss. Where might we have done the same...over a lost loved one, marriage, relationship, ministry?

Paul bore on his body the scars of a life lived out in Christ. Many were his losses and wounds. He saw all of them as testimony that he belonged completely to his Lord and Savior. Beth Moore said something to the effect that if we give them to Him, Jesus will write His name upon our wounds and scars. His signature not only marks us as His, but is a testimony to His healing. As Ruth Graham says, when we surrender our wounds to Him, they become sacred. Sacred wounds. They become so because they are signed, in love, in His blood, with His name. But only when we give them freely, willingly, to Him.

It is said that the only wounds and scars that will be seen in heaven will be Christ's, the mark of both His crucifixion and resurrection. And by the power of His wounds, all trace of our wounds will be gone. Yet on this side of eternity, we still bear them. How will we bear them? As captives or conquerors? Do we live in them, make idols of them? Or do we surrender them to Him and see them made sacred? Sacred wounds. Is that what ours are?

Blessings,
Pastor O