A writer I respect, Ian Morgan Cron posted this poem on his Facebook page.

   The Healing Time

                                                Finally on my way to yes
                                                I bump into
                                                all the places
                                                where I said no
                                                to my life
                                                all the untended wounds
                                                the red and purple scars
                                                those hieroglyphs of pain
                                                carved into my skin, my bones,
                                                those coded messages
                                                that send me down
                                                the wrong street
                                                again and again
                                                where I find them
                                                the old wounds
                                                the old misdirections
                                                and I lift them
                                                one by one
                                                close to my heart
                                                and I say    holy
                                                          holy.

                                                               © Pesha Joyce Gertler

I was deeply moved by this poem and my heart was captured by a few words in particular....red and purple scars...hieroglyphs of pain....holy. What happened next I can only describe. I saw a scene in the new DreamWorks movie The Croods ( if you have not seen the movie its ok!). The caveman father Grug is sitting with his family in their dark cave and he is telling them stories which he then illustrates on the walls of the cave. All of his stories end in death so he puts an emphatic The End to each one by placing a large red handprint on it. The effect is dramatic for when you look at the walls of the cave you don't see the family stories...you see large red handprints. Death has won, life has been blotted out.

But....my mind raced to another cave thousands of years ago, one that actually looked much like the Crood's cave. It had every story of death ever told for it was the very home of Death. I saw that The Son of God Jesus Christ went down into Death's dark cave and spent three days there. What He did we cannot put into words but we know that when He came forth from that grave He brought Life and Light and New Creation. Death was not the end of the story; Christ wrote Holy over it all!

If you are In Christ you no longer abide in Death's dark cave of fear. Every story of your life illustrated on those walls the Son of God inscribed HOLY over and it can never be erased for it was written in His blood. Death holds no power over you. Those stories have no power over you. Your purple and red scars, hieroglyphs of pain have been healed, redeemed....marked Holy to the Lord.

Can you see your cave, your body, your life, your heart, your soul; your story is holy to the Lord? You are a Holy one, a Saint marked out by the Holy Spirit created in Christ Jesus for life in His New Creation. When you see this you are finally on your way to saying Yes...Amen...so be it. You are on your way to the true healing time.