THESE SCARS
They Still Speak
The Silent Language of Living Wounded
Wherever you are today, your limitations, your walls, your scars are before God’s eyes.
September 21st, 2022
IVYWILD
Oh, dear Lord, where there are walls, make doors instead. Please tear down the walls and build us doors where the walls once stood. Amen.
In homes and businesses alike, walls provide protection from outside elements, people or weather, crime or damage. They are erected for structure and safety, designation and details. They provide warmth or cool and establish boundaries and comfort. There are some places in each city and parts of the country where homes differ. Some neighborhoods are surrounded by gated communities. Some areas are guarded by tall ornate fences or rock walls. Architecture can vary from state to state, whereas in some parts of the country might structurally proffer log cabins and stick-built homes; other areas might primarily be brownstones and brick houses, homes ornamented with stucco and stone. Castles might dot hillsides and barns are found at the end of lengthy drives next to farmhouses and riding arenas. In some areas of our world, houses stand on pillars high above the sea. Some people live in shelters made of mud and sticks and roofs made of straw, nothing really remotely like what we know as home. We find too many today living in homeless camps, decorated with colorful tents, or cardboard boxes on the fray of garbage dumps. But, regardless, for every dwelling, it contains walls and boundary lines.
Just like with any building, the walls people put up emotionally provide the same shelter and stability. Walls denote, ‘Do not enter.’ You don’t just walk inside someone else’s home without being invited. You must have a key or an invitation. If you enter someone’s business or home without either one of those two items, a key or an invitation, you are considered a trespasser, a burglar, unwelcome. So it is with someone’s emotional barricades. We don’t get past those barriers without an invitation or the key to being trustworthy enough to delve deeper into someone’s space. Where someone has erected emotional walls and created a safe space, not just anyone is going to be allowed inside.
Sometimes, some of us have been hurt so deeply, those walls barricade us in as well as the determination to keep others outside of our personal circumference. Often times, it can truly be difficult to trust enough the world in which we exist to allow ourselves freedom to roam, to allow someone else the privilege to enter past our walls and into our inner sanctity. In fact, some people have been so devastated by betrayal, abandonment, abuse, coercion, they permanently have established a residence and obtained an address on a street called Isolation, at the corner of Fear and Despair. The structure they have created to blockade themselves in is overgrown by years of rambling distrust and an undergrowth of thick desertion much like ivy which has wound itself around wrought-iron fences; thistles and weeds clotting once-barren land. Too often, the safety of aloneness and seclusion eclipses the comfort of companionship and camaraderie, so we settle in, establish roots—the years pass; we find ourselves detached and alone, taking up space at an address we no longer can leave, nor where we wish to stay.
We have a God Who understands our walls. He knows all about our walls and what caused us to build them. He also knows what it takes to tear them down, to demolish them, and the pain sometimes it creates to watch them crumble. He alone knows what is best for His children, and His desire for us is not to have us existing desolate and isolated and forsaken. He sent His Son to create a door where walls once stood so that we can come to God the Father despite the limitations of our boundaries and impediments; so that we can allow others to come inside and fellowship with us and us with them; so that relationships can grow and snuff out weeds of distrust and aloofness; so that your scars can heal and mine can fade. Let Him establish your outer remnant; let Him make pathways and open wide gates that swing on hinges of trust and hope and friendship.
Psalm 16:6, ‘The boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places.’ (NIV)
Isaiah 49:16, ‘”Can’t you see? I have carved your name on the palms of My hands! Your walls are always my concern.”’
