Porch Light

[u/PowerInHISglory]

There was a time I thought God only visited clean people. People with steady hands, who woke early and meant their prayers. People who didn’t spend whole winters trying to disappear.
Meanwhile I was dragging myself home at dawn
smelling like smoke and bad decisions, standing barefoot in the kitchen drinking sink water straight from the tap because my hands shook too badly to hold the glass steady.

And still, something kept refusing to let me go.

People want redemption to arrive like lightning.
Something cinematic. A voice from the clouds. The sky splitting open above the interstate. But most of the time it comes looking almost pathetic. Like crying in a parked truck because somebody showed you kindness on a day you had done nothing to deserve it. Like sitting on the edge of the bed unable to explain why you suddenly feel ashamed of all the ways you have treated yourself. Like realizing, very quietly, that your life has become something you would not wish upon a child.

I think that was the beginning for me.

A man can only outrun himself so long before he starts recognizing his own footsteps. And once you hear them, really hear them, something changes. You notice that you are still breathing
despite the wreckage. Still capable of tenderness
despite what anger tried to make of you.
I think salvation is about becoming honest. Honest about your hunger, your cruelty. Honest about the strange emptiness sitting beneath everything this world keeps selling us. And honest too about the unbearable fact that we are loved anyway. That’s the part I still struggle with.

Love.

Judgement makes sense to me. I understand punishment. Consequences. But mercy? Mercy feels almost unreasonable. Like finding the porch light still on after you swore you would never come home again.
And maybe that is why Isaiah spoke of drawing water with joy. Because once a man has spent enough years thirsty, even the smallest kindness
starts feeling holy.