Scars

 

I was about 14 years old and my brother Phillip was about 12.  It had snowed a damp snow - just the kind to make great snow forts and great snowballs.  We were making our forts and setting up strategic snowball stockpiles.  But we only had one snow shovel.  So an argument developed with Phillip and me tugging on the same snow shovel.  I was overpowering Phillip, and at the moment of my fiercest yank, he let go.  I ended up hitting myself in the head with the sharp edge of the snow shovel.  After a trip to the doctor, I had six stitches in my right eyebrow.  But I was happy.  Scars made me look more like a street fighter.  I am seventy-five years old next week, and I still have that scar in my right eyebrow.  When I comb my hair and I look in the mirror, I am reminded of the snow shovel fight over sixty years ago.  Hey, do you have a scar to remember a mishap in the past?  Do you have any spiritual scars to remember past failures?  It could be a divorce.  It could be time served in prison.  It could be a departed loved one that was never reconciled.  Whatever the scar, God’s grace is there as well.  God will forgive if we but ask.  John said in I Jn 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  God will forgive and forget, but we will remember because, the scar is always there.  But the scar is a good reminder - of our mistake AND of God’s forgiveness.