I shared this meditation with our church family in our Ash Wednesday service on February 13, 2013
It began as a
family visit. Two of my aunts had come
over to visit my mom and had brought their children with them. For reasons I will never understand, these
adults decided that their visit would be more pleasant if they allowed my two
cousins and me to play somewhere else.
The weather outside was not so good that day, so we were allowed to go
downstairs and play in the basement.
After a while,
we got bored with the toys that were there and created our own game. We discovered that if we climbed five of the
ten stairs that went from the basement to the main level of the house, we could
step off of the stairs and stand on an old draftsman’s table that my dad used
as a workbench. Then, we could jump from
the workbench on to the basement floor, somewhat like paratroopers jumping out
of an airplane. We made our first jumps
rather tentatively, but once we discovered that we could survive the fall, we
became a kind of living circle—three preschoolers running up the stairs,
jumping on to the table, then leaping out into space and landing on the
floor.
All was well
with the preschool airborne division until one of my jumps went awry. A sudden crosswind must have blown through
the basement because I missed the landing zone and crashed into a horse. This was my rocking horse, one of my favorite
toys, but not my best friend that day.
When I landed, my head collided with the frame that supported that
horse. One of the bolts that held the
horse’s springs to the frame was sticking out like the nub of a branch on a
tree. As I collided with the horse’s
frame, my face slid across that bolt, tearing the flesh away from my left
eye. I knew at once that it hurt. I was much more convinced that it hurt when I
pulled back my hand and it was covered in blood. My cousins screamed as though they had seen a
monster and ran all the way up the stairs for help. In just a moment, my mom came down the
stairs. I offered her my preschool
diagnosis of my wound, “I
think I need a Band-Aid.”
Terrified by the bloody mess around my eye, she screamed and, for a
moment, ran back up the stairs.
I don’t know how
our next door neighbor, Mrs. Kay, got word that I was hurt, but in what seemed
to be only a moment or two, she was in our basement with me and my mom. I remember that she was wearing what we
called a “housecoat,” a cross between a robe and an outfit. She saw me running around the basement,
screaming in pain and leaving a trail of blood.
She called me to her, wrapped her arms around me and held me close until
some of my panic eased. Then she told my
mom to start the car. What we were going
to a nearby doctor’s office. When we got
in the car, an old 1957 Chevrolet, Mrs. Kay stuck her hand in her housecoat
pocket and used that part of her garment as a compress to hold against my eye
and to keep me from moving around. She
held my wound like that until we arrived at the doctor’s office and they took
me to the back.
I met the entire
doctor’s office staff that day. It took
them all to hold me down while the doctor did his work. Two shots and eight stitches later, the storm
of terror passed and, for the first time in quite a while, I looked around the
room and actually saw what was there. I
remember seeing the doctor, who looked very tired. I saw my mom, who looked very relieved. But what I remember best is Mrs. Kay. One whole side of her new white housecoat,
the side she had held against my torn flesh, was stained with blood. Mom said, again and again, how sorry she was
and that we would buy Mrs. Kay a new housecoat to replace this ruined one. Mrs. Kay just smiled and said, “I don’t care about this, as
long as he’s OK.”
I lay there,
looking at my neighbor covered in blood, wearing the biggest bloodiest stain I
had ever seen and thought, “my
wound did that to her and she didn’t mind.” Fifty years later, Nannie
Kay and I are Facebook friends.
This is Ash
Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a day that many Baptists don’t observe, but
I’m glad that we do. For as we begin our
journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to the Garden, to the
cross, and to the tomb, one truth needs to be clearly written upon our hearts, “my wounds, Lord Jesus, did that
to you.”
Isaiah says it
this way,
(Isaiah 53:6)
We all, like sheep, have gone
astray, each of us has turned to
his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Christ came to
me when I was broken and bleeding, life itself slipping away. He found me running wildly in the panic of my
pain. He wrapped his arms around me and
held me close so that healing could begin.
He touched me where I was wounded, taking the bloody mess of my sins
upon Himself. He was willing to take the
stain of my wounds upon Himself.
As we come now
to receive the mark of these ashes, carry this mark throughout this season,
I am a broken
sinner.
I need a
Wonderful Savior.
One who, in love
for me, bears the stain of my sins.
Dr. Gerald Mann, founding pastor of
Riverbend Church in Austin Texas, tells how he and his wife Lois couldn’t
afford a honeymoon trip when they were married.
Six years later, because of free passes he received from the airline he
worked for at that time, he and Lois took a trip to 
