If you are anything like me, you might see God’s hand in every sunrise and sunset. Every harmony, whether in human voice or sweet birdsong. Every discernible constellation in the night sky and every majestic animal sighting (Who am I kidding? All the animal sightings). You might see God at work in a fruitful conversation with a loved one or a chance encounter with a stranger. God is infinite. Thus, we must be able to find him in infinite places. But what about where we least expect? What about where we are not even looking for him at all? What about when we have run so fast and so far from his love, or his wrath, not wanting to see him whatsoever?
I was raised in church by a Jesus loving family. I grew up with the classic Sunday school heroes of the Bible and sang all the rhymes and hymns. I was baptized at seven; coincidentally, when all the other seven year olds there were baptized, too. I loved Jesus as much as I was able, with what little understanding I had. I knew Jesus inasmuch as I was told he died for my sins. Whether or not I truly saw myself as a sinner is a different story.
My childhood church experience is not a unique one. Nor is my escape from it. Even the gruesome and gritty details of that escape and the reasons for it are not terribly novel, though there were certainly some shocking plot twists throughout the journey. It is the unexpected place I found him that stands out.
Through a series of catastrophes, both external and self-inflicted, I found myself slightly homeless by the time I turned twenty. There were safe places I could have come crawling to (if I’d had any sense of humility), but I opted for a frenemy’s scratchy sofa in a sketchy neighborhood, as she was the only one who applauded and even egged on my destructive choices. For over two years, it seemed as if my mind had taken a seat in the back of an audience as I watched my body on the stage ahead, performing in some increasingly erratic melodrama. The kind you cannot help but shake your head and laugh at because no real person could ever end up in such outrageous situations. I was very nearly at the end of myself. I sat alone on that scratchy sofa wondering how on earth I ended up there. I bet you think this is the part of the story where I found God. Perhaps through some mystical revelation, or maybe I was knocked off the sofa and blinded until someone was called to pray the Holy Spirit into me.
In a Sunday School class like mine, you might have learned that there was once a really bad guy named Saul, who Jesus turned good by blinding him for a few days, and then changed his name to Paul. That was as much as I knew about Paul until much later as an adult. It is a shame, really, since I had several Bibles within reach all my life. I never bothered to open one except for when, only on the rarest of occasions, I wanted to make sure I kept certain potential sins within the boundaries of the law. It turns out, Paul’s story is much more complex, and interesting, than I had known.
The book of Acts describes Saul as a man ravaging the church, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”, seeking them out—men and women—and dragging them from their homes. In chapter 9, we find him on his hunt when a sudden light from heaven flashed around him: “And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’” (Acts 9:4) It was the voice of Jesus. Those with him heard his voice as well, but saw nothing. Ironically, neither did he, as he was blinded by the Lord. I would say he was not expecting to find God in such a way, just outside of Damascus. Jesus told him to enter the city and await further instruction. Meanwhile, God spoke to a local disciple named Ananias and told him to find Saul, the hunter of his brothers and sisters, and lay hands on him, so that he might regain his sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ananias must have been terrified, but he obeyed, and Saul, who was also named Paul (dual names were apparently common in those days), went on to author much of the New Testament and taught Jews and Gentiles alike of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Paul was looking for God in the sense that he zealously wanted to destroy anyone who dared to follow Jesus, God’s son. If I am being honest, while on that sofa, I was not looking for God at all. Not even a little bit. Though, it might sound better if I had been. I was not looking for a solution. I was content to keep on digging even deeper into the pit that I had made of my life. It never occurred to me that I was actually digging for God that whole time.
Like so many, I had searched for him in the expected places. Places that I suspect every creature finds themselves searching at some point or another. We were designed for safety, love, comfort, and goodness. Unfortunately, we also find ourselves in a fallen world. We go looking in buildings, the arms of another (or many others), indulgence, and even vengeance for satisfaction. Too many feel as if they risk it all just walking through the doors of a church building, only to find themselves deflated and ashamed, their thirst unquenched. No, I was not looking for God on that sofa. That was the last place and time I would have expected to find him. Much like with Paul, he found me instead.
I have told the sofa story dozens of times. I love that story. I often describe imagining God gently picking me up by the shoulders, rerouting me like a mother might her wayward toddler, and kindly saying, “We’re gonna go this way now.” Truly, I think it was just like that. But in that moment, even though I recall what felt like divine intervention, scales did not fall from my eyes. I did not immediately proclaim the name of Jesus in the local synagogues. I was just looking for my next fix. I could never have imagined that the person he prompted me to call that night would become my beloved husband, the father of my three children. I could never have guessed that he’d eventually lead me by the hand into a church. A church in the basement of a defunct department store that would become my safe haven and spiritual home on this side of eternity. Where he would surround me with a trusted gospel-centered community and, little by little, show me how he connected puzzle pieces in my life that I didn’t even know were from the same box. There was not an immediate transformation, but it was a dramatic one over time. A slow burn in my heart. I had been dead by my own hand and for some reason, he chose to give me life abundantly.
Unlike Paul, I was no person of note, whose evil mission was thwarted by very public and miraculous means. You probably are not either, and you will also likely never have such an extraordinary about-face. I was just a super messed up and slightly feral kid on a sofa. I was broken beyond repair and I knew it. Everyone knew it. But God goes to great lengths to bring us back under his wings.
“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”
John 10:29
He loves to show us that he can do the impossible, and sometimes, that is redeeming the most unworthy and unlikely of sinners. Our guy Paul wrote,
“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
1 Timothy 1:15
Maybe you are like me and God has already called you from the depths and taken you on a really weird adventure. Or maybe you cannot relate at all. Wherever you are in life, know that God pursued us first because we are important to him. He made us in his image. Read what he has to say. You will find the best dad on a mission to rescue his children. “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out.” (Ezekiel 34:11) “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) And take heart, knowing that,
“the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:26-28
Like kintsugi pottery, he is happy to put our shattered pieces back together with his glory, unashamedly displaying (not hiding) our breakage and his repair. He is not afraid of our pasts. I was no one special. I am not still. But I am his. Paul reminds us,
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39
He will come for his children and nothing can stop him, no matter what they have done and no matter where they are. He found me in the most unexpected of places, where no one else had bothered to look, and carried me home.
Photo Credit: Emilee Carpenter
