Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:7-10)
I have spent a good portion of my adult life trying my best to run away from all things holy. And, the amazing, if not annoying, truth that I have discovered through my running away is that no matter how far into the darkest, seediest corner I wander, I can’t escape the presence of a very persistent God.
One very dark evening, God found me in the corner of an empty bar parking lot. It was a few minutes past closing time, so the dregs of people that had shut down the joint had gathered outside to wait for our rides home. One of the guys standing around tried to light a cigarette and couldn’t because the wind was too quick and cold. As everyone began fumbling to help, I noticed that there was an old candle in my coat pocket. Weird, I know, but strange things often find their way into my coat pockets and purse bottoms. I had been keeping my distance from the group while I waited on a friend to arrive, but something in me led me to walk over to them and offer the old candle.
The candle lit easily and stayed lit as they passed it around the circle so everyone could light up. As we began sharing stories, I realized that the candle I was holding had been in my pocket since the last candlelight service that I had attended.
It had been almost two years since I last held that candle and sang songs of hope and peace, and it had been even longer since I had tried my very best to shut the door on God. As I held the candle for the circle of once-strangers, our walls began to drop and we opened up to each other. Part of the reason why we were so willing to open up to one another had something to do with the fact that we had just closed down a bar, I’m sure. But regardless of how we got there, the stories we shared eventually began to sound an awful lot like prayer requests. Then the encouragement we offered one another felt a lot like the casserole-toting, caramel-cake-baking care of a church family. We even tried to bellow through a sloppy version of Silent Night. The broken concrete we were standing on was littered with forgotten smokes and puddles of sloshed-about drinks, but for us that night, it was holy ground.
When our rides arrived we hugged like old friends, and then scattered back into our own lives. I flopped down into the backseat of my friend’s car and thought, “So, I guess you’re still here, huh?” The candle in my hand, still warm and melty from the flame, was a tangible, piercing-the-darkness “Yes!,” from God.
There are a few things that I must remember, now that I don’t try to run from God quite as often. The circle of light that I shared with those fellow bar-flies was no less holy than the high-church candlelight services I attend now. And if hope can find its way into a seedy corner of a bar parking lot at 4am, then certainly hope can find me in my seat in the back corner of my church sanctuary.
I know now, most of the time at least, that God will find me, no matter how far I run. I’ll raise a candle to that.
