My family loves to watch movies, and at Christmas we have several staples we must watch year after year. One annual tradition involves us cuddling up under blankets on the couch to watch the Polar Express. As the movie comes to an end, we see a young man finding the his lost sleigh bell under the tree with a loving note from Mr. C. As he lifts the bell to his ear and shakes it, both he and his sister hear the beautiful ringing of the North Pole and are mesmerized by its tone— signifying that they still believed in the magic of Christmas. Reaching down, his father takes the bell and shakes it himself, but he is unable to hear the ringing. Clearly, he was too old and too learned to still believe in Santa, the North Pole, and flying reindeer. Handing the bell back, he laments, “It must be broken, sorry bud.”
No one wants a broken toy. A broken down toy doesn’t function the way that it is supposed to. It isn’t anywhere near as fun! The same is true of any broken thing. A broken down car is just a giant paperweight in the driveway, a broken program is just a resource and memory hog on your otherwise efficient computer. A broken arm is no good for throwing a curveball, and a broken relationship fails to fulfill any of our needs.
At birth I was broken. Diagnosed with a rare genetic immunodeficiency, my body just didn’t work the way that it was supposed to. Playful activities that every child should enjoy were not just off limits, but potentially dangerous. Playing in the dirt could stir up fungal spores that could take up residence in my lungs and threaten my life. Mowing the lawn could stir up certain pathogens into the air that could take up residence in my body and threaten my life. I grew up on a farm and so there were thousands of opportunities for me to accidentally inhale, ingest, or internalize any number of foreign particles each of which could attack my broken body and… you guessed it…. threaten my life.
The serratia infection left me with a large scar that spanned most of my little abdomen. To make matters worse, my body rejected the stitches that had been used to hold the incision together which meant it would have to heal as an open wound. Every day, my mother would lay me down on the bed and pack my wound with a dressing that would work to keep the infection out while allowing my body to heal itself. This scar would become a visible reminder to everyone who saw it just how broken I was.
Jodi and I have never been “go to the store and pick out your brand new appliance” kind of people. Yes, we have been blessed to have purchased a number of brand new, very nice, appliances in our over two decades of marriage, but our first stop when looking for a new device is not the “brand new” aisle, it’s in the “AS IS” aisle.
You’re not familiar? Oh it’s the best.
Sometimes a new appliance will have a minor flaw. Sometimes it will get scratched or dented while being removed from the truck. Sometimes someone orders something and then decides it is the wrong color, or they don’t want it. In those cases, these slightly less than perfect or unwanted items get relegated to the back of the store, their price gets discounted, and they are sold with a big giant tag stating: “AS IS.”
The tag is there to let you know that something isn’t quite right. It’s not like it should be. It’s broken. Some of the flaws are obvious, you can see them from a distance. Others are so minor that it is difficult to find them even upon close inspection. Either way, the tag is the warning to any potential buyer. Purchase at your own risk, and if you do, there are no take-backs. You get it scratches and dents and all. AS IS.
My AS IS tag was an 8-inch scar across my belly. Though just to look at me, I may appear like any other kid my age (just slightly… ok, a lot… shorter), the second I took off my shirt to get into a swimming pool or to change into my gym clothes my AS IS tag was there for all to see.
I became very aware that I wasn’t like everyone else, and I did everything I could to keep the truth of my brokenness hidden front he world. I wouldn’t talk about my disease. I hid my scars from everyone. I went into full-fledged AS IS tag-management, keeping the defective parts of me tucked away and out of the public eye. It was a heavy and exhausting burden for a young man just learning how to navigate life.
Even as I got older, and came to a deeper understanding of my illness and how to share the truth with my friends and others, I still found myself hiding my scars. I almost made it a semester without my college roommate seeing them, and I timidly prepared every girl I dated for what she might see if we ever went swimming together.
My AS IS tag was hard to hide and the stress of hiding it was overwhelming as you can imagine.
Before I was born, my biological father had discarded me. He didn’t want me because my very presence was an inconvenience and an embarrassing reminder of a mistake. He didn’t even know about the disease that ravaged my body, or the burden that I would be to caregivers throughout my life. Surely he would have left even more quickly had he known about my brokenness.
The older I get the more aware I am that we all belong in the scratch and dent aisle. Just like the appliances we find there, all of us bear the bumps and bruises of a world broken by sin. Some of our wounds are easy to hide and manage, while others are obvious and gross. Either way, everyone of us is broken. We know it. And because no one wants broken things, we assume that no one would want us either.
Maybe your AS IS tag has brought you heartache and rejection. Maybe you’ve had people leave you and abandon you because your brokenness was just too much to bear. Maybe you’ve been so ashamed of your scars that you have hidden yourself away from the world, refusing to let anyone know the real you, because if they did, they would make fun of you, hurt you, mock you, or leave you because of the marks the world has left.
Maybe you’ve even bought into the lie that God himself would reject you. If He knew the dark thoughts that swirled around in your heart then surely He would leave just like everyone else. So you’ve pushed away from Him, hiding from His presence lest He reject you, too.
But the truth is so much better than the lie. The truth is that God is well aware of your AS IS tag. He knows exactly the location and the depth of every scratch and blemish, and although you can’t control what other people think about you, you can be certain what God thinks about you, and He thinks that you are pretty incredible!
Although you can’t control what other people think about you, you can be certain what God thinks about you, and He thinks that you are pretty incredible!
Worth dying for actually.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8
God’s love is so great that it calls us out of our hiding. It calls us to come and celebrate our scars, our weaknesses, and our trials. Because when we are weak, then He is strong.
…he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
I am still learning to not be ashamed of my scars, but instead to use them as a tool to point others to the goodness of God. My prayer for you is that no matter how deep the wounds, no matter how glaring or embarrassing the imperfection, that you would come to the very freeing realization that God knows about them all, and chooses you anyway.
Sometimes in church we sing a song called Great Things by Elevation Worship. There is a line in the song that just hits differently now.
Thank you for the scars I bear, they declare that You are my healer.
How could I have seen Your strength of You never showed me my weakness.
The fact that God would choose me in spite of my brokenness is overwhelming. But to make sure that I wouldn’t grow up to miss the truth, He would give me a physical reminder of his acceptance…
Jeremy Powell 