Marked by Our Rescuer

Today I had lunch with my friend Ange and she was telling me about an experience she had this past weekend white water rafting in West Virginia. As her and several of my other friends were going down the river, they came upon a particularly rough part of the river and my friend Kristin was thrown out of the raft. Seeing Kristin struggling in the dangerous current, Ange immediately reacted by grabbing her arm and pulling her back to safety. And she went on to say that she had grabbed Kristin's arm so tightly that she left a bruise. In the act of being rescued, Kristin was marked by her rescuer.

After Ange told the story, I looked at her and replied, "Well...I know what I'm going to blog about today" and this is it. In Galatians 6:17, St. Paul states that "I bear the marks of Jesus on my body". At that time, slaves were often marked so as to show to whom they belonged. Though Paul is talking about the literal scars and wounds that he has from being flogged and stoned for preaching the Gospel, this statement applies beautifully to our experience of faith.

The truth is that our world is so very much like the vicious current that pulled Kristin into the water. This society we live in is marked by greed, pride, immorality, relativism, deceit, and unfaithfulness and we as Christians are trying to work our way through these waves of evil and sin. But the truth is that since the Fall of man, we have been overcome by the waves. We fall in. We get stuck. We are drowning in sin.

But the beauty of our faith is that there is a rescuer. And that rescuer chose to be marked by the piercing of nails so that WE might be marked as his people. What we could not do, he has done. When we fell victim to the waves, he came to rescue. When we were drowning, he reached down to save us. And in this act of being rescued, we have been marked by our rescuer.

Today, let us meditate on this great mystery--that the Son of God willingly chose to be pierced for our sinfulness. And let us give thanks that he has claimed us, that he has saved us, that we have been marked by our rescuer.