We all have “those” kind of people in our lives. Wether they are friends, family members, or ex’s, there is always that one person who has made bad choice after bad choice to the point that their lives are in ruin. Many times we label them with words like leeches, losers, or just plain toxic,  And if “yours” is like “mine”, then you know that when they call you, their life is in a state of crisis, and more often then not they need some kind of help. To be totally honest, I hate answering those phone calls, I dread returning those messages, and I make excuse after excuse to put it off. Yesterday I got one of those calls...

  

   He needed a ride to get some money or he were going to be kick out of his one room studio. It was an emergency. I had things to do, I had to go to work in a few hours, and I really had no desire to again enter into his life and be confronted with all of the chaos and hurt. I really just wanted to say I was too busy to help.

   So, at 8:30 in the morning, I drove downtown to pick him up and hear the whole story. He had gone on a drinking binge (again), got in a fight with his girlfriend, and she left, taking what little they had. This caused a downward spiral into a deeper multi-day drinking binge, and now he was broke, lonely, and on the verge of being homeless. I had already resolved not to allow myself to believe his excuses, or to lend any money, but there was something about the way he kept telling me, “I really f-ed this up”, that made me realize that God was already working here.

   I wish I could say that in our brief time together in the car he surrendered to the way of Jesus, miraculously was healed of his alcohol addiction, turned his life around, and found a few thousand dollars on the street. Instead, we found a way to get him enough money to pay this months rent (he even offered gas money to me), and we had a few disjointed conversations about God and His love for all people. He gave me the classic line that he was already on his way to hell, but he didn’t understand why bad things happened to the “good” people he knew. He’d given up on God but he didn’t understand why God had given up on others. Amid his ramblings I tried to share that God did care about him, and that He wanted the best for him, to experience real life. It was in the middle of this that he uttered these words that nearly brought me to tears, “I know that, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

   Wow, are you serious! Really. I didn’t want to be there. I really didn’t have any hope for him, and would have done anything to avoid being there. And yet, in spite of myself, God allowed his love to be incarnated in me! To this hopeless man, I appeared as the love of God. What an honor.

   I dropped him of at his apartment, told him I loved him, and that he would be in my prayers, and that was the end of it. I don’t know what will happen next, I don’t even know how much of his story was true. But I do know that God’s love showed up in my car yesterday, without me even really wanting it to, and it got me thinking. How many other people in my life are searching desperately for the love of God, but no one is showing up to revel it to them? How many of us miss out on chances to be Jesus to others because we’re to busy, or because it is too mess?. And how many people are just waiting to be able to say to us,

“I know that God loves me, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”