Article June 21, 1993 Issue

The healing of scars

Can prayer heal the effects of an unhappy or harmful incident in the past?

Jan Johnston

When I was a young teenager, I tore my hand on a barbed-wire fence. I had been walking through a pasture when a bull charged at me, chasing me over the fence. The resulting cut left a scar that actually looked like a piece of barbed wire imprinted on the back of my hand. People who noticed it would often ask me where it came from, and I would tell the exciting story.

As the years went on, the scar remained, dimmed only slightly from its original state. Every once in a while, someone would inquire about it and I would, again, explain how I got it so long ago. Because it caused me no pain, I saw no reason to heal it.

One Sunday morning, in a Christian Science Sunday School class, the subject of old injuries came up. One of the students had an unsightly scar and wanted to be rid of it. As the teacher, I felt a responsibility to deal with this topic and began to do so when my own unusual scar became apparent. One of the students pointed to it and said something like, "Well, you never got rid of your scar!"

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The healing of scars

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