The Astigmatism Of The Stigmata

When they tried to kill the Son of God, they nailed down His hands and feet, pierced His head with a crown of thorns and stabbed Him in the heart with a spear. There is a lot of symbolism in the cross, but I want to talk about the symbolism of where specifically Christ was wounded. Christ was wounded on His head when they placed upon it the crown of thorns. We symbolically shove our own crown of thorns upon the Savior's head when we insist that He can not possibly understand what we are going through. We make sure that He can't understand our pain because we weave a painful thicket of thorns to block out any thoughts He might have. We symbolically nail Christ's feet to the cross when we insist that Christ can not reach us where we are at. When we feel that we have gone too far beyond the reach of God's love or forgiveness, we are effectively nailing His feet down, saying that He can't come where we are. We symbolically nail Christ's hands to the cross when we believe that God does not have the power to help us overcome our current seemingly impossible situation. When we place limits on God's power, it is the same as trying to nail down His hands to try to stop Him from working His mighty miracles. We symbolically stab a spear into Christ's heart when we tell Him that He can not, is not allowed, to love us anymore. We believe that Christ can't feel our pain or perceive our goodness and our infinite worth because we try to break His heart beyond repair so that we may prove that either God is dead or that He does not love us. Neither the Jews nor the Romans nor the Sanhedrin nor Pontius Pilate nor the angry mob nor the executioners killed Jesus Christ. No man or woman or group of people could have taken away Christ's life. He could have remained on that cross for a thousand years, pierced and bleeding but not dying unless and until He Himself chose to give up His life. And when He took it back again during the Resurrection, Jesus Christ healed His body except for the wounds He had received because He wanted to prove to us that we cannot place limits on His love and His power. We can heap thorn after thorn upon His head, but we cannot stop Him from thinking about us. We can drive nails into His feet, but He will still run after us, leaving bloody footprints in His wake. We can nail down His hands, but He will scoop us up in His arms and carry us out of the Hell of our own making just the same. And we can pierce and stab and break His heart again and again and again but He will never stop loving us. Christ has no Achilles' heel. He has no weak spot. There is no place that we can wound Him or nail Him down that will stop Him from coming to our side and embracing us with His understanding and His power and His unconquerable, unshakeable, undimmable, undeniable, invincible, indescribable love.