Daily Word of Grace # 46 (May 19, 2020)
In Cormac McCarthy’s award winning 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses John Grady Cole has a moving conversation with Duena Alfonsa, the grandaunt and godmother of Alejandra, the girl with whom he has fallen in love. Duena notices the scar on John Grady Cole’s cheek, “I’m going to guess that the scar on your cheek was put there by a horse.” “Yes mam. It was my own fault.” She watched him, not unkindly. She smiled, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?” “No mam” (135). All of you have scars—whether internal or external, whether scars you show others and perhaps brag about, or scars you show no one and refuse to discuss with anyone. Those scars remind you that your “past is real” and that the events that caused them “can never be forgotten.” The gospel is good news for scar bearers, because God knows you better than you know yourself, including your scars and the events that caused them. Moreover, even now the Risen Jesus still bears the scars that remind all of us that God’s love for us is indeed very real, that the events that caused them in his passion and death for the world, including you, on Good Friday, “can never be forgotten.” This is true for the whole world corporately, and for all of us individually, as Jesus made crystal clear to “doubting” Thomas when he showed him these very scars (John 20:24-28).
Love and Prayers,
Dave