The Jesus I Never Knew - Philip Yancy

I am reading The Jesus I Never Knew -- I think Yancy's best yet. It is really beautifully written.

He writes frequently, in this book, about the sudden deaths of 3 very close friends and how these deaths challenged his faith.

In Chapter 11, Resurrection: A Morning Beyond Belief, he mentions the various visible historical evidences of Christ's resurrection.  We are all familiar with them. And about some of the non-believers, scientists and scholars, who set out to disprove the resurrection and then instead found themselves becoming convinced of the truth of Christ and His resurrection, and outspoken believers. 

But I was also touched by these words from Chapter 11, beginning on page 218.



     I believe in the resurrection primarily because I have gotten to know God. I know that God is love, and I also know we human beings want to keep alive those we love. I do not let my friends die; they live on in my memory and my heart long after I have stopped seeing them.

 For whatever reason-- human reason lies at the core, I imagine--God allows a planet where a man dies scuba diving in the prime of life and a woman dies in a fiery crash on her way to a church missions conference.

But I also believe this -- and if I did not believe this I would not believe in a loving God-- that God is not satisfied with such a blighted planet.

Divine love will find a way to overcome: "Death be not proud," wrote John Dunne: God will not let death win.

One detail in the Easter story has always intrigued me: why did Jesus keep the scars of His crucifixion? Presumably He could have had any resurrected body He wanted, and yet He chose one identifiable by its scars; scars that could be seen and touched.

I believe the story of Easter would be incomplete without those scars on the hands, the feet, and the side of Jesus.  When human beings fantasize, we dream of pearly straight teeth and wrinkle-free skin and sexy ideal shapes. We dream of an unnatural state: the perfect body.

But for Jesus, being confined in a skeleton and human skin was the unnatural state. The scars are, to Him, an emblem of life on our planet, a permanent reminder of those days of confinement and suffering.

I take hope in Jesus' scars. From the perspective of heaven, they represent the most horrible event that has ever happened in the history of the universe.

Even that event, though--the crucifixion--Easter turned into a memory.  Because of Easter, I can hope that the tears we shed, the blows we receive, the emotional pain, the heart ache over our lost friends and loved ones, all these become memories, like Jesus' scars.Scars never completely go away, but neither do they hurt any longer. We will have re-created bodies, a re-created heaven and earth.

We will have a new start, an Easter start.