“And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.” Luke 24:40
During devotional time the other day, I was thinking about the hands and feet of Jesus. We hear this phrase used often in the church world, usually referring to us being or acting like or on behalf of Jesus. Isn’t that what being a Christian is all about? Serving.
This can cover a broad spectrum, from the simplest acts of love we bestow upon someone all the way to the grandest manifestation or gesture we could ever imagine into being. We may simply serve in a soup line or organize and provide the finances for a huge orphanage overseas. We may clean a toilet at a church or build homes for the destitute. The list of ideas are endless. How do you serve? How are you being His hands and feet?
There is something else I want to remind us about Jesus’ hands and feet. They are scarred.
And, just like that, any crazy notion that we may have about grandeur, status, or recognition while serving and being the hands and feet are dashed. Of course, we need not serve for those reasons anyhow, but have we really ever stopped to count the cost, because along with fulfilling this role will probably come pain and wounds. Scars.
Scars are inevitable when being the hands and feet of Jesus, but they are absolutely necessary and to be expected if we are going to represent Him.
This shouldn’t scare us away from serving, it should merely make us determined and cognizant that we will be targeted and scarred while we serve.
My Dad is “retired”, but he still insists on doing side jobs anyhow. He was on a job several weeks back and had a run-in with a ladder. The ladder tried to get the best of him, but thank the Lord, my Dad won the battle. He didn’t get out of it unscathed though; he now has a nice scar on his head. (My sister and I joke about needing to wrap him in bubble wrap.) He had to rest for a week or so, but it didn’t keep him down or scare him away. He’s back at work, still using the same old ladder - and bearing a new scar.
Imagine it. Jesus, God in flesh, could’ve healed and eliminated the scars He bore from His earthly ministry, but He didn’t. He came to earth to serve all the way to death. He was sold out!
I just want I tell someone today. Keep serving! A life of servanthood in God’s kingdom may come with seasons of humiliation, hurt, rejection, and leave ugly scars; but we’re never more like Jesus than when we’re humbly serving. It isn’t about being “all that”, it’s about being all in. We’re all human and can expect to get hurt along the way, as well as possibly being the cause of hurt for others. We always hear that there’s no hurt like church hurt, and maybe that’s true, but it’s not a good reason to quit.
Are we going to be the hands and feet of Jesus? Then scars should be expected. And accepted. How can we expect to be scarless when Jesus wasn’t? How can we serve people without the chance of being wounded anyhow? It’s impossible. Serving must be done in humility and meekness preferring others over ourselves; let us not be weary nor become hard and bitter in the process.
So, whether we have scars from just doing life, or from serving, they will one day be no more. Until then, let’s humbly serve and be the hands and feet of Jesus, knowing it will be worth it all one day and that we’re looking more like Jesus every day. Let’s serve well and not be bitter, quit or be embarrassed by our scars; let them be reminders that we’re the just hands and feet of Jesus.
Serve well and be blessed today.