Outward signs of an inner grace...

Growing up in the Deep South on a farm before the advent of sunscreen, I always had a sunburned nose (at least) during the summertime. My fair skin came with a dose of small freckles that increased in number and size with exposure to the sun and age. The sun was courted for the gift of an even tan, a sign of elegance and beauty for our generation. We slathered our bodies in a mixture of baby oil and iodine to deepen our tans as we laid out in our backyards, by pools, lakes, ponds and beaches. Coppertone was a tanning aid not a sunscreen.
Trips to the beach were rare for our family. We were baling hay or putting up food from the garden during prime beach time. When my college Baptist Student Union took a retreat to a nearby beach, I went and spent the whole day in the water. Somewhere along the way I must have felt my sunburn setting in because I remember borrowing a tee shirt to wear as we played in the waves. By the end of the weekend, I had an ugly case of sun poisoning. My skin swelled, blistered lobster red, and I was nauseous. As the red faded, sheets of my skin began to peel off much like the shell of a boiled egg. It was not a pretty sight.
Fifty years later, I am reaping what I unknowingly sowed… pre-cancerous spots and basal cell cancer. Looking at my face, I can see the faces of a long line of farmers in my family, worn and weathered with brown spots from a lifetime of exposure to the sun. All those hours spent working and playing outdoors are written on my face and dermatologists read it like a book. Even though I have been wearing hats outdoors for years with sunscreen applied, my early love affair with the sun left marks that have not faded. My latest visit with my friendly dermatologist left me with four frozen spots on my face. Ironically they blister.
A phrase I heard frequently at baptisms in my church life… an outward sign of an inner grace… comes to mind now for some strange reason. These blisters, the scar on my nose from surgery serve as outward reminders of the inner grace that has come in the gift of my body. My body has been my teacher, my guide from childhood until now. To be incarnated in a body is an unimaginable gift even though most of us are not altogether pleased with our packaging. We see ourselves as too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, big thighs, round faces, imperfect when measured against other bodies we see around us. And as we age, the free flowing fluidity of youth gives way to hitches in our get along. We long for the good old days when most of our body worked easily and without struggle or pain.
What if I could see these aches and pains, these scars, the gradual fading of strength and beauty as outward signs of the inner grace of being? Being a child of God, mortal, finite and limited but grounded in grace leads me to the Immortal, the Infinite, the Unlimited Loving One who called my body into existence. As my body changes and ages, gifts of the Spirit become ever more necessary. “ Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…against such there is no law.” Thanks be to God for my body, the miracle of being and the reminders of my mortality. I pray my soul will be made whole even as my body begins to gently fall apart.