You’ve probably heard by now that Europe has been scorched by a terrible heatwave these last weeks. Until the last few years, western and northern Europe had prided themselves on not needing air conditioning to cool their homes. Summers there are typically cool and often drizzly. The records that are being set there this summer, however, are proving that their climate is changing and that they might want to consider a window unit. At the very least.
In addition to the pictures of brown lawns and sweaty Brits, another phenomenon has made headlines in Europe. The unrelenting heat and accompanying drought has revealed the secrets and scars of yesterday’s past. Visible most clearly from the air, observers are finding that the torrid summer heat is burning off the grass to reveal ancient burial grounds, the ruins of forgotten castles—even moats!--as well as mansions, gardens and even munitions from previous World Wars.
In one fascinating instance, the letters EIRE can be seen as a ghostly script written into the fields above Ireland’s west coast. The practice of emblazoning the grass with the word EIRE—which is Gaelic for Ireland—was used in World War 1 to warn combatants in the air not to bomb the neutral nation.
This has served to remind me that stress often reveals what’s going on beneath the surface. As we begrudgingly admit, nothing stays hidden forever. When the heat is on, we more easily see what lies beneath.
As much as we might like to try, we cannot escape our past. The hurts and the losses, the injuries and the tragedies of yesterday are imprinted on our souls. And just when we think we had forgotten these moments and fault lines of circumstances and eras long forgotten, a merciless heatwave reveals that they are still etched on our hearts.
Stress, then, can be the great revealer of what lies beneath.
I came across this quote from an unknown author the other day and it has lingered with me in a way that suggests truth:
“I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief.”
The angst and anger that we feel may be masking the grief (or anticipated grief) that we feel over the losses we experience in life.
Our anger and resentment, irritations and furies may be more than circumstantial annoyances. They may be reflective of a deeper reality that we have tried to forget and repress. But our efforts of suppression will ultimately be unsuccessful because heat and pressure reveal what we’ve tried so hard to ignore. And at its root is loss. At the heart of these scars is our grief for the way things played out in our past.
Let’s face it. Our scars feel beyond redemption. It’s no wonder that we try and hide them.
Thankfully, Jesus didn’t think so.
As he revealed to his disciples, Jesus had scars. But unlike you and me, Jesus had the strength and courage to allow for his past to become part of a story that had become a sign of God’s redemptive power. In his betrayal, and in his apparent failure as God’s preeminent prophet, Jesus was a broken Messiah who was wounded by the people he had come to save. Brokenness, however, is part of the human experience. And like Christ, we are all broken in any number of real and painful ways.
But our brokenness is not the end and it does not always have to haunt us. Our pain and our sorrows, our failures, defeats and lost-causes should not be repressed or hidden, but should rather be allowed to be mourned so that its power over us can be mitigated. This requires patience, and courage, and resolve. It requires maturity and a spirit of reflection so that we are not blindsided today by yesterday’s pain.
Again, we cannot hide what lies beneath forever and always. It will surface; and at the most inopportune moments. But the good news is that these places of pain and sorrow will be redeemed just as God redeemed the death of his son. The more quickly we reveal our scarred pasts to God’s light, the more swiftly they will become part of our stories of redemption.
Scorched earth requires time to heal. Christ’s own redemption took a season of darkness before his scars were able to become object lessons for hope and for God’s eternal healing. But with the waters of our baptism, God can bring new life to the most-scorched of landscapes. And where there was once pain, hope and healing can spring up.
