She had been gone 5 months.
5 long months.
She left home in a fit of rage, rebelling against her parents…no looking back she charged into a world that stood with open arms, ready to take her rebellion and turn it into fuel for a much deeper, darker fire.
He hooked her quickly. He knew just what to say, what to offer. He knew just how to look at her to make her feel the edges of her “no one gets me” start to soften. He made every promise she had always longed to hear.
She was hooked.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months under the heavy eye of a man who had no intention to love her, only to abuse and groom and sell and trade her. Night after night after night, no rest for her weary feet, weary mind or weary heart.
She was his alright. His property, owned. She was hooked, more than she wanted to be.
One night the emergency hotline of our ministry rang…
“Hello…” said an extremely shaky voice on the other end of the line.
“My name is Susan. My daughter is in danger, she’s in trouble and I don’t know what to do,” I could hear the I-gave-birth-to-her desperation in her voice.
She told me the story, or what she knew of the last 5 months of her daughter’s life…which wasn’t much. But what she knew was enough. Enough to know that a rescue was in order.
I talked her through her panic. Asked her for details and told her to call back if she heard from her.
The phone rang the next night.
“It’s Susan. We’re going to get her. Someone told us where they thought she was. He won’t let her leave so we’re going to take her from him. We will call you when it’s done.”
They didn’t know the room number, only the hotel name.
They didn’t know what he looked like, only that he had their treasure and they intended to get her back.
They sat in the parking lot and waited.
Waited for any sign of her. Checked the hotel’s laundromat and found her clothing in the wash. They knew she was there.
They waited. And finally, there she was. He walked her to the room and the door closed.
They waited.
The door opened and he left. They didn’t know how long he’d be gone…they didn’t care.
She sat down on the bed, on a pile of money that she had just piled as proof she had done the job. She was tired. She was scared. She didn’t know how much of both she really was.
There was a knock on the door.
She opened it, and shocked, stood face to face with her father. He had come for her.
There she stood, make-up thick and clothing sparse, looking like the work she had just done.
There she stood, eyes locked with her papa…he had come for her and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
He stood in the doorway and when her captor returned spoke not one word to him.
She ran.
Her papa chased her.
He picked her up and physically put her in the car…kicking and screaming, she had been rescued.
The last person she expected to be on the other side of that knock….the rescue she least expected.
She was free and she had done nothing to deserve it.
Her daddy’s love was the only qualifier. He saw past her mistakes, past the pain, past the scantily-clad shell of a woman who stood in front of him… he chose to knock, chose to enter into that room, chose to pick her up, chose to bring her home.
He was her coming-for-you-hero.
Jesus. The coming-for-us-king came screaming like a babe into existence that night….a flesh and blood knock on the door of humanity’s heart.
He was the last person expected to be on the other side of the knock that would save the entire world…a baby in a dirty animal- feeder, surrounded by a rag-tag group of people, the least deserving- according to society.
Those lowly who had just been given access to the King of the Universe, showed the world that this flesh-and-blood God was for us all, from the Kings to the dirt-covered-sheep-keepers, everyone was invited into this scandalous grand- entrance.
All of God’s nature, crammed into the tiny, skin-wrapped vessel.
The least expected type of rescue.
God, Papa, in all of His all-knowing-ness chose to chase us down, chose to look past all of our brokenness and all the times we would choose everything but Him and chose to come for us anyways.
He was not what the world expected.
Not who we thought would ever lock eyes with us, as we stand shocked in our shame, covered in the evidence of our brokenness.
He’s the King who chooses the lowly, the prostitute, the sick, the leper and the orphan. The King who chooses you, and me. The King who chooses to give full access to Divine to us, undeserving as we are.
He is the Coming-for-you-Hero-King and His showing up has changed it all.
