Thank God for the Wrinkles

Mother’s Day is often filled with celebration, flowers, and happy memories.
But for many people, it can also stir grief, disappointment, waiting, or longing.

In Luke 2, we meet a woman named Anna who reminds us that God does some of His greatest work through lives marked by wrinkles—not wrinkles on our skin, but the deep marks left behind by sorrow, waiting, and endurance.

Luke tells us that Anna had been widowed after only seven years of marriage and had spent decades alone. By every worldly standard, her story looked marked by loss and disappointment. Yet Anna did not allow her pain to define her. Instead, she devoted herself to the presence of God through worship, prayer, fasting, and faithfulness. Her sorrow didn’t drive her away from God—it drove her deeper into Him.

Many people carry invisible wrinkles: miscarriage, betrayal, divorce, church hurt, broken relationships, grief, unanswered prayers, or years spent waiting for God to move. These experiences leave marks on us that cannot simply be erased. But the story of Anna reminds us that the deepest pain in our lives does not have to become the defining truth of our lives.

Pain may mark us, but it does not have to own us. The truest thing about us is not what we’ve lost or endured, the truest thing about us is that Jesus came to bring new life, healing, and redemption. God has always used imperfect, wounded, unlikely people to display His goodness. Throughout Scripture, He chose people with messy stories and deep scars to reveal His glory.

Isaiah 61 reminds us that Jesus came to bind up the brokenhearted, comfort those who mourn, and exchange ashes for beauty and despair for praise. But He didn’t come simply to leave us sitting in our pain. He came to redeem it.

The wrinkled places in our lives can become the very places where God’s grace shines the brightest.

The people God heals often become the people God uses.

So today, maybe the invitation is not to hide the wrinkles in your story, but to let God rewrite them. The wrinkles may remain, but they can become evidence of His faithfulness—proof that He carried you, sustained you, and never left you alone.