The Surgeon's Hands

Dr. Elena Vasquez had performed over three thousand surgeries at Chicago's Cook County Hospital, but the one she remembers most happened on a Tuesday in March. A nine-year-old boy named Marcus had been rushed in after a house fire, his lungs seared, his small body broken by a collapsing beam. The damage was catastrophic. Elena worked for eleven hours straight, her hands steady even as her heart split open.

What the nurses noticed afterward was Elena's hands. They were raw and trembling, cut in several places from the splintered rib fragments she had pulled from Marcus's chest cavity. She had refused to stop, refused to re-glove, refused to waste even thirty seconds while the boy's oxygen levels plummeted. Her blood had mingled with his on the operating table.

Marcus walked out of that hospital six weeks later. Elena still carries the scars across both palms.

Isaiah 53:5 tells us that the Messiah was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was laid on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. This is not abstract theology. This is a Savior who refused to pull back, who let Himself be opened up so that what was killing us could be removed. We are Marcus on that table — broken beyond what we could survive. And the Healer's scars are the proof that He never once looked away.