“Please Come Find Me”

(Sometimes I question whether or not the churnings of my mind will make any sense to others. This is one of times….)

“Please come find me.”

I wonder if those four words voice the common longing of a child’s heart. (And of many adults as well.) To be “found” is to have someone, anyone, care enough to seek and to see a person, until they are fully known.

During worship this Sunday I spoke those words to God.

“Please come find me.”

Those words came from my own long-seated longing to be found. Particularly by one person to whom I was never actually lost. But who seemed content to live without really knowing where I was. Which left me questioning who I was.

(Photo Credit)

Isn’t this the cry of countless men’s hearts?(And women’s as well?) To have a father willing to dig through all the stuff that tries to define him. Until he gets to the heart, and identifies him, “son”. (Or her, “daughter”.)

How else will a son ever know, without a father who loves deeply enough to search for him?

But that takes time. Time that many of our father’s did not take. Or perhaps they were afraid. Or they themselves had never been found, so how could they enter the search for their own child’s heart?

So the need remains. Unmet. Growing. Generation to generation. Until a cry pours out,

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (Psalms 139: 23, 24)

“Please come find me.”

And that’s what God did for me this Sunday. He disrupted my personal flow of worship. He went straight to my heart and uncovered a wounded place that had long marked me. I felt angry to be found out in that moment.

Very piously (this was during worship, after all!), I spoke to God,

“I don’t want to be angry right now.”

“Yes you do. Don’t stop.”

So in His presence I expended my anger, quietly. And then, with timing only God could orchestrate, the worship team began to sing,

Oh, I’ve heard a thousand stories of what they think you’re like
But I’ve heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night
And you tell me that you’re pleased
And that I’m never alone
You’re a Good, Good Father.
It’s who You are…*

God will search for us, not because He is trying to find us. He already knows exactly where we are. But He will search for us until we find who He is, and thereby discover who we are.

That’s how I know I’m a son. I may not yet be fully found. But in the searching I’m continuing to learn this…

 I’m loved by You
It’s who I am
It’s who I am*

* “Good Good Father”, Chris Tomlin