How a Collision Can Point to Christ

Out of nowhwere, the lady with a metal cart of food, slams into the fatless leg of my husbands solid-muscled calf. Blood shoots like a volcano as a large vein becomes exposed to air.

It isn’t the first time this leg has been injured.

Years ago, I was awakened, jolted awake, in the early morning to pray for my husband’s legs. Prayers that could have only been prompted by a good, good Father.

I get a call the next morning, ““I have fallen five feet from a bridge that wasn’t anchored”. 

He ended up getting stitches, but the stitches from a busy emergency room didn’t hold.

Over the next few weeks, flesh oozed from that wound. A surgeon had to go in, rip apart what was, stuff around that flesh and re-stitch that leg up.

“Now I have a cross on my leg”, my husband shares today, somewhat somberly.

He has worked the same job for twenty-five years and is able to retire soon.

But the body remembers the score. It holds tight to pain. It struggles letting go of hurts perceived or experienced from physical or emotional wounds.

We all want freedom.

But I wonder why we can tell ourself lies, be deceived with covering over pain with positive thinking, when wounds dug deep into our being never fully let go unless The One much greater touches us with His healing.

Things like “fear of spiders”, “addictions” and “preferences” have been proven by science to cling to our DNA and can carry with people, generation to generation.

That’s why a child could be adopted, yet still fall into the same trap or spiritual patterns as a fallen parent, despite never knowing their history or a completely different upbringing.

Without the power of Jesus, is there even any hope for any of us?

I walk into a grocery store to pick up my husband’s newly prescribed antibiotic, treating the wound to stop infection. It’s what we all want on some measure, isn’t it…

A prescription to stop infection; infectious hate, terror, division and self-preservation…

How might the world look differently if we could just stop the infection of sin?

Three wild kids run into me in the produce isle. They look like one of my daughters. I smile and nod as the mother apologizes for their behavior.

She is tired and ragged and what she doesn’t know is that I have a handful of my own at home, and sleeplessness is all too familiar.

We are all not that different eachother.

The lonely eternally wander for food as if looking for spiritual nourishment. 

They need more than the world gives them. They will never be satisfied on yesterdays portions. And neither will you or I.

We all so desperately need food for our souls daily, or we too will become zombies, hoping for answers, wandering the same isles of loss and desperation.

An older lady stands before me. Her thin stature and high cheekbones tell me, she was once beautiful, striking. But now her sagging skin, bleached hair, thin, crooked stature tells me, for her….the world is fading.

Oh, good health…have I given thanks for it today? Do we take for granted our greatest gifts, or instead just crave another blessing?

I try to smile at the crooked-backed woman. But she scorns back at me. Appears to despise my strong smile and and healthy existence.

I ache, knowing, “What if that was me someday”? Would I take whatever God gives me? Or would I despise each breath He continues to give me?

And lastly, I walk by her. A young, flawless creature. She reaches for a product above my head. I hear loud music coming from her back pocket.

Why is she sharing personal music loudly in a grocery isle with everybody? Where are her earphones? What message is she trying to give people?

Her thin frame, long legs, and perfect face screams of possiblities. Yet, her eyes seem dim as she hostily ignores me, grabbing what she needs and leaving the isle quickly.

I hear the words belting from the phone in her back pocket. It sings, “Somebody, won’t you save me?”

And I grieve all this neediness, all these lost souls crying out through pain and priorities, isolation and crooked thinking.

I realize….Aching isn’t just for those with crosses on their legs, or flesh oozing. Pain is real and it is found in the aging as well as the young and beautiful.

Some speak pain with isolated wandering through the isles of life.

Others scorn, as if keeping the world a distance away with crooked backs and hard stories.

Others blare their truth loud and proud, as if calling for help, but refusing it when they get some.

People all want health, but fail to depend on eachother. How often have I been isolated as well in my pain, baring inner scars, refusing to let anyone in?

All of us ache. We ache for a deeper story, a happier ending, a quieter landing to the hard that is this journey called life.

We want perfect endings in a world that can feel jagged and bumpy. We long for beauty or youth, or more possesssions to save us.

Yet, truth is…

Even health and wealth leave us empty without Jesus.

I grab the antibiotic from the Pharmacy in the back of the grocery store for my husband. I want to run from all the heartache to the man that gave his life up, working daily, for me and my children.

I want to count every hour he spent laboring without complaining because he found love was the answer and self-sacrifice can become beautiful when we lay our future down at His feet.

I desperately want to shout in the store of aching, “Jesus is the way.”

To the crippled lady I meet a few cars away from me who scorned at me again, like she did in the store earlier. “Jesus still can heal.”

I want to gather all the lonely hearts in the isles wandering like zombies, “Jesus is a friend to all.”

He is the answer, our only hope. He is the way maker, the healer of our souls.

I don’t know if my husband’s leg will heal completely after this second cut. His wound is deep. Yet, His blood reminds me of another who shed His blood for me.

A cross will forever be branded to my husbands calf. 

He will be a walking representation of another who gave up His life, of the One who died the perfect death so we could live the perfect life, full of hope and help and grace.

While even the beautiful are crying, “Somebody, won’t you save me?” Jesus already has.

His Word is life and power. His answer is just one cry away, “Help”.

Despite how the world looks in it’s mysery and pain, He is still near the broken-hearted, the broken-bodied, the broken-spirited, the lost and alone.

He is near the deeply wounded, those quietly hurting. And He will make a way, for every one of us. Jesus is enough.

The cross on my husband’s leg reminds me of that promise. Now and forever, despite what tomorrow brings.

Jesus identifies with our suffering. And He also, as a resurrected King, still bares His earthly scars.

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” ~ Psalm 34:18