I can still remember my pain. Even though it’s been twenty years in the past, I still recall what it feels like to be at the bottom of the barrel, at the end of your rope, and in all honesty, considering hanging yourself from that rope. That’s what hopelessness feels like. It’s the empty end of all your expenditures, a place where you’d rather die than keep fighting. It’s a final surrender, a waving of the white flag, an admission that you can go no further. I still remember that place.
That’s where God found me.
I was nineteen, and life was becoming more confusing and difficult than I had imaged it would be. I was suffering through broken relationships, financial hardships, and the consequences of my own mistakes. My heart hurt, and the current pain was compiled on top of a lifetime of emotional baggage I had brought along. I didn’t feel worthy, worthwhile, or even worth breathing the air in front of me. I felt broken, my heart hurt, and the raw pain of how hard life can be rose up out of my chest in segmented sobs of utter defeat. I cried in pain, alone in my dorm room, and I considered if life was even worth living. I certainly couldn’t continue in my current state.
That’s where God found me.
I was so weak. I didn’t know the answers. I did not know what to pray. Only one hoarse, pleading petition came from the shell of me.
Help.
In that one word my spirit cried out, I can’t do this anymore. I need you. Save me!
That’s where God found me.
Years later, as humans tend to do, I found myself half way across the country from that tiny, dark dorm room, and about a million miles away from God’s will. I had gone my own way, forgetting His mercies, and turning my face from His glory. In this new path of my own design I had fouled things up miserably, and I don’t even know if I believed I had the right to ask God for anything. Certainly not after all the bad things I had done.
That’s where God found me.
On a long stretch of highway, in the middle of a broken marriage, shell-shocked about a seemingly great life suddenly gone bad. A husband who no longer loved me, and the sudden realization that I no longer loved myself either. I drove with tears streaming down my face, in mourning for a decade of pointless folly finally crashing down on me, and above the sad music on the radio you could barely hear my heartbroken plea.
Help.
That is where God found me.
He heals the broken-hearted, He binds up their wounds, and He makes all things new. All things.
I have discovered there is no place too far for His hand to reach. There is no sin so great that it can’t be washed clean. Like the prodigal son, our Father is always at home with open arms. He pulls out all the stops, He sets the table, He prepares the finest feast. He says, “Welcome home. I’ve been waiting.”
That is where God finds us.
He finds us in our surrender. He finds us in the dark. He finds us in the lonely places.
He finds us when we reach our end. He rescues us from our own demise. When the world says, “she’s a washed-up, used-up, good-for-nothing,” He says, “she’s perfect.”
That’s where God finds us.
He is the rescuer, the redeemer, the lifter of my head. He’s the one that when I looked in shame at the life before me, with regret, He said, “it’s forgiven. It. Is. Done.”
That’s where God finds us.
When I look back at the wasted years He says, “I can use it. I can work with that. You’re never too far gone.”
He was always there. Waiting. Calling me home. In our brokenness He finds us, and then He makes all things new. He can make anything new. Even you.
Here. Right here and now. That is where God finds us.