One summer during seminary I had an internship at an Episcopal church working with the homeless in urban Atlanta. I met a fellow intern there — sharp, professional, remarkably composed. I genuinely admired her.

One day at lunch I noticed her sleeves had pushed back slightly, and I caught a glimpse of pink, raised scars across her wrists. She saw that I saw, and quietly pulled her sleeves back down. Both arms, she told me, were covered on the inside with scars from years ago, when she had cut herself as a teenager.

I must have shown my discomfort, because she looked at me gently and said, "Joe, everyone carries their past with them — whether you can see it or not."

I have never forgotten that.

We all carry scars, don't we? Some are visible. Most are not. The wound from a relationship that never healed. The loss that quietly reshaped everything. The chapter of our story we don't easily share. We learn to cover them, to appear composed and professional and together — and we are, mostly. But the scars are there.

What strikes me about the resurrection story in John's gospel is that when the risen Christ appears to his disciples, he doesn't arrive unmarked and triumphant. He shows them his hands and his side. He shows them his scars. And it is precisely by his wounds that they recognize him.

He carried his past too. And he was not diminished by it.

Perhaps our scars are not the evidence of our weakness but of our common humanity — the quiet language that connects us to one another, and to a God who understands from the inside what it means to suffer.

Prayer: Loving God, we come to you today carrying things we don't always speak of — old wounds, hidden scars, the weight of a past we can't quite set down. Remind us that you know what it is to carry those things too. Meet us in our pain, and in our hiding. And may the scars we carry become, in your hands, a source of connection and compassion rather than shame. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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