Here is one:
| I have a scar—two inches wide and about six inches long—on my right knee. I’ve had it for more than seventy years. I got the scar when I was a boy in a dusty ghetto in Tidewater. Some of my friends and I decided to raid a man’s yard to steal peaches from his tree. We went into his yard as quiet as mice with sneakers on. But he had a premonition of our coming, and somehow our intentions had been radared into him. And out of the darkness and the stillness, there he emerged wielding an ax handle, and he came after us one by one. I escaped him when I made a move like O.J. Simpson and darted for the fence, and I scaled the fence. I didn’t know that I had caught the head of a rusty nail in my knee, and it ripped my knee open right down to the bone. That nail left the biggest, ugliest scar on my knee for all of these years. My knee was ripped open for stealing peaches. Every since then I have read about the cross with deeper understanding. I had one nail in my knee for something as useless as stealing peaches. One nail for an act of no consequence whatsoever; I bore the pain and the suffering literally for nothing—for a peach. But Jesus! I had one nail caught in my knee. They drove nails into his feet, nails into his hand, and a sword into his side. I had one nail caught in my knee. I bled for a peach. But he bled so that we could have peace with God. |
| Proctor, Samuel. “Jesus Went Farther.” The African American Pulpit (Winter 2008-2009): pp. 77-78 |
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