Dancing with the Scars

My daughter and I were watching a show together last night and some people were dancing, which made me think of the show, “Dancing with the Stars.” However, as I muttered that phrase to myself, it came through the brain pipes as “Dancing with the Scars.”

Perhaps it was because I’d just been talking with a group the day before about the scars of Jesus. Perhaps it was because our YMCA just finished a fundraiser we attended that was a takeoff on the show (The YMCA Ballroom Battle).

Or perhaps it was the way God wanted me to hear His voice with this turned phrase, because I began to think. . .what does it mean to be “dancing with the scars”?

First, I thought of Jesus and Hebrews 12: 2. . . “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. . .” On the cross, Jesus was wounded. But three days later those wounds yielded to scars when he stood up. He danced out of the tomb. One of the things I didn’t like about the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” was that in the resurrection scene Jesus didn’t smile. I’m not saying Jesus began breakdancing, but I sure do think he smiled. And I know that heaven had a dance party, knowing that Emmanuel, “God with us”—scars and all—was coming back home. He was Holy and healed, but still scarred from the journey on earth (see John 20:24 ff.)

SIDEBAR: It is doubly interesting to me that in the Old Testament Jewish law, a person with wounds was “unclean,” but a person with scars was clean (see Leviticus 13:22 ff.)

Then I thought of us. We have all been wounded. I know I was this year. Some wounds are open, which makes it hard to dance. But, when those wounds close are we more prone to dance or just to show the scar and talk about the old wounds? Honestly, I’ve done both this year. I’m determined to dance more in 2012 than I have in 2011.

I’m determined to take my scars and go dancing with them. I will dance with the One who turned the wounds into scars to remind me that He, too, once was wounded for me. 

How about you? Got wounds? Got scars? Got dancing?