One morning last week, I drowsily glanced in the mirror and found a disturbing development. Seemingly overnight, a deep crease had formed in the skin near my right eyebrow. I leaned in closer, hoping a different angle would reveal it to be a shadow. But as I examined my new wrinkle, a line from the classic film, Steel Magnolias came to mind: “Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it’s marchin’ across your face.” Sooner. Much, much sooner than I’d hoped. 

I’d like to say that I shrugged my shoulders and went on with my day. But the truth is, I grabbed my phone and searched for wrinkle creams. As I scrolled, I remembered an article I was editing titled, “Wrinkle Cream Can’t Redeem You.” In it, Whitney Pipkin writes about the messages we find in culture presenting our “multiplying creases as flaws to be corrected.” Then she poses a thought-provoking question: “What if wrinkles—these markers of the passage of time—aren’t something simply to be erased but are meant to remind?” 

We’re all aging—whether or not we can see the evidence on our faces. And all of our efforts to look young do nothing to address our deeper problems of sin and death. But, as Pipkin writes, “God’s answer to the problem of death and aging was to take the full weight of sin upon himself.” Jesus “came down to earth as Emmanuel, God with skin on.” 

Because of the marks on his body, our bodies will one day be glorious and eternal. Until then, may our sagging skin remind us that our hope is not in jars of wrinkle cream. Rather, “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 2:7).