Looking For The One Looking For Me

​One of the very first things God decided about us is that it's not good for us to be alone. In the book of Genesis, God settles Adam - the first human - in a beautiful garden. But then he said that wasn't enough, that as beautiful as that garden of Eden was, it wasn't good for Adam to be there alone.

So, he created Eve.

He created a relationship as the answer to it is not good for us to be alone.

Dr. Curt Thompson says that newborns come into the world looking for someone who has been looking for them.

I have a picture of my oldest son Elliott taken the day he was born. I call it my baby Elliott picture in presentations I do. In the picture, Elliott is about 12 hours old. He's in an incubator in a NICU, and I have come to see him for the very first time.

My hand is reaching inside the incubator, Elliott's eyes are fixed on me with a stare that looks like it might never be broken. For years I struggled to find the words to describe that moment. These days, though, I say it's a picture of Elliott finding someone who had absolutely been looking for him.

I believe God created those incubator moments because that's what God wants our experience to be with him. Us finding God - us seeing God's face shining upon us - and feeling like we found someone who has been forever looking for us.

A serpent came along in the garden of that first human relationship and convinced it that joy isn't found in one another - or in the face of God - it's found in knowing all there is to know about life and not in the experience of togetherness.

We've been chasing joy outside of togetherness ever since.

It's a toxic pursuit, because we were created for joy. Nothing else. Created to experience joy and created to sow joy's seeds. To experience joy in the faces around us that say, "I am so excited to see you; I've been waiting."

Sown from the seeds of our faces that gift that same excitement to someone else.

The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that joy could much easier be found in an apple than it could be found in one another. The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that the God who created them to find joy in Him - through our connections to one another - was actually hiding the TRUE source of joy in a tree.

Adam and Eve believed that lie. It's hard to be too critical of them for that, because it's a lie we believe too.

We come into the world newborns looking for a world that is excited to see us. And we wake up every day - born once again - looking to find it one more time. Too many of us don't find it.

That, more than anything, is at the heart of a loneliness epidemic. It's at the heart of a hurting epidemic and at the heart of all the obsessions and abuses and addictions people are turning to in an attempt to sooth that hurt.

What an eternal success story for a serpent who was hell bent on turning us away from a life of joy and toward a life of hell. What a success story for a serpent who needed us to crave truth more than we crave each other.

But the serpent doesn't have to win.

It is never too late to turn away from him, and then toward one another, and wear the face that says oh how I've been waiting to see you - you are looking at the one who has been looking for you.

We can do that for one another - today. In our own homes and in our own communities. In our own gardens.

Maybe you didn't wake up this morning feeling like the world is excited to see you. I get it. Maybe a good first step in changing that before tomorrow morning is showing someone a face today that says, "I'm excited to see you."

Leo Tolstoy says, “Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.”

Light a candle today. It's what we were created for.

May God be gracious to us and let his face shine upon us - like a candle. And might it begin with us being equally gracious with one another.