I was on my way into the grocery store the other day (my life seems to revolve around very little other than shopping for food, making food and cleaning food off of dishes and people.) And I walked past a little vending machine with a small Christian magazine inside.
On the cover was a photo of Jesus – His hair in place, His face shining, His skin flawless – and I don’t know how He did it with the tools that they had back then, but His beard was perfectly groomed. This guy deserved to be on the cover of, “GQ Bible Times.”
Growing up in the church, I have seen photos of Jesus like this often. They are on handouts. They are on the wall. They are on the covers of books and Bibles and banners.
And as many times as I have seen photos like this, that particular photo in the vending machine caught my eye. I looked back over what the artist considered perfection, and I thought to myself, “I do not relate to that man at all.”
My Jesus? He walked miles to share His love – I bet He sweat like crazy. I bet Jesus’ clothes were dirty. I cannot imagine that He had many different outfits. I cannot imagine that as He was busy healing the sick and mending broken hearts He said, “Y’all, let’s pull over and find a Laundromat.”
Give me ungroomed Jesus. Give me dirty Jesus. Give me a picture of a real man who was full of purpose and overflowing with love.
Give me a man who died, rose again, but kept His scars.
Scripture says that after Jesus rose from the dead, He let His friend Thomas put His fingers through the places where the nails had been driven.
I wonder about the rest of His scars. Scripture isn’t as clear about them, but I bet they were there. I bet He had scars across his brow from the crown of thorns. I bet He had scars on His back where He had been beaten and whipped. I bet there was still a mark on His side from where He was pierced.
Sometimes, we worry about getting everything right. We worry about how people will see Jesus in us – with all of our brokenness and our own stories of pain. We fear that maybe our humanity will prevent them from experiencing His divine love.
But the truth is, maybe we look more like Jesus than we think.
I looked down at myself. Dirt under my nails from playing in the sandbox with my kids, feet that could use a pedicure, hair in need of a brush, and clothes from a pile at the foot of my bed.
But more than all that. I’m a person full of scars. I have my own places that have been made whole, yet a mark remains.
Like Jesus, the healing has come for me. The places where I was wounded don’t hurt anymore, but there are still scars in my heart that tell a story. And best part of the story isn’t how I was wounded, but how I survived.
I don’t know the man with the perfect hair. I don’t know the man with the spotless clothes and skin.
But I do know the Man who taught me how to love God and love people completely.
I do know the Man who will use the story of my scars to bring hope and healing to others.
The marks on our hearts don’t make us less like Jesus – they make us more like Him.
Because the perfection of the Son wasn’t in how He looked. It was in how He loved and continued to praise the Father through it all.
Today, I choose to give Him my mess. I choose to allow Him to use my scars to bring hope to others. Because it’s okay for the world to see a messy Jesus- and today, they just might see Him through me.
