Found

In the movie August Rush, the character Wizard and Evan, aka August Rush, the star of the movie, are trying to choose a performing name for Evan. Wizard tells Evan to close his eyes and tell him what he wants most to be. Evan complies, closing his eyes, and immediately opening his eyes with the simple yet reverberating answer - "Found."

When I heard that short exchange, it stuck with me, echoing a lifelong cry in my own soul. Oh, how we all desire to be found!! Everyday, I meet people or see people I know doing crazy things to be found. Like a struggling musician looking to be discovered, or an abandoned child praying that their parents, or a great new family, would find them, we all go through life hoping that someone or something will find us. What do you want to be found to? We want to belong, to be important to someone. We long to know that we are needed and cherished. We all want to be found. So, ironically, we search to be found.

In America, we talk alot about our need to find God. We talk alot about the process of searching for God. This has always bothered me. I tried that search myself in high school, and never found anything except frustration. To bring up another good movie quote - in the wonderful movie Forest Gump, Forest is having a conversation with his military friend, whose name I cannot remember right now. God comes up, and when his friend asks Forest about finding God, Forest responds, "I didn't know He was lost." In another movie, New In Town, when the star moves to a rural town in the north, a local woman asks her if she's found Jesus - the woman responds, "I didn't know He was lost."

Why do we look so hard for God, when He's not the one who's lost? We long to be found, but ya know, the truth is that we're not lost to God either. He knows right where we are and He's there with us. But we feel lost... We haven't experienced being found - we are lost to ourselves, lost in the alienation of our minds, as the apostle Paul writes in the New Testament. So we look for discovery in other areas, always skipping over the truth that we're already found.

In high school, when I finally fell down on my knees, quite literally, exhausted from trying and searching so hard but finding nothing, I gave up my need to find God, to find belonging, to find love. And I simply begged Him that if He existed and loved me at all, to please find me. I couldn't take it anymore. So I stopped searching.

Ya know what? He found me - in fact, He'd been there all along, working in my life to bring me to that moment when I could begin to know Him as He already knew me.

Your Creator, you Redeemer, your Soulmate knows you intimately, loves you, and is with you. You are found through Jesus Christ. Stop searching and look to Jesus.

He found you.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.