Before I Ever Called

Genesis 3:8–15

When word comes that one of our Restarters is in trouble, I don't rest easy. It might be a missed shift, a relapse, an old friend turning up at the wrong hour, or a worried message from a halfway house. Before the call has ended I am already on the move, phoning, texting, praying and fixing. I tell myself it is love, and often it is. But if I am honest, some nights it is also fear. I am afraid that if I am not quick enough, someone will slip under and it will be my fault. Even my praying can turn into one more way of trying to hold everything together myself.

Genesis 3 humbles me. After the fall, Adam and Eve did not run to God. They hid among the trees, stitching fig leaves over their shame. I know that posture well. For years I was the boy who thought he ruled the world, and when it all came apart, I hid too. I hid behind pride, behind excuses, behind anything that kept me from being seen for who I really was.

Yet the first thing God said to fallen man was not a sentence. It was a question: “Where art thou?” God came looking. He walked into the wreckage before Adam ever called for help. Before a single consequence was named (the thorns, the sweat, the pain, the dust), God spoke of rescue. The Seed of the woman would come. His heel would be bruised, and the serpent's head would be crushed.

That is the gospel folded into one verse. The heel is Calvary, with its real wounds, real nails and real death. The head is the empty tomb, the final blow to sin, shame and death itself. A bruised heel heals, but a crushed head does not. Christ took the wound so that I would not take the verdict. In Him there is now no condemnation.

I think of the men I sit with through Crossroads. Many have been hiding for a long time. Some cannot believe God would still come looking for them after everything they have done. So I tell them what Pastor Paul Tan once told me: the Father was searching for you long before you knew you were lost.

None of this means life stops hurting. The thorns are still in the ground. Our Restarters still wrestle with old wounds, criminal records and doors that stay shut. TCE has walked through its own seasons of loss. But the story does not end in Genesis 3. It ends with God Himself wiping away every tear, and with death and mourning gone for good.

So when the phone rings with bad news, I will still pick it up and do what I can, but I can lay down the fear. I am not the rescuer. I am a witness to the Rescuer. My quick fixes are small and often late. His promise was made in Eden and sealed at the cross, and He is still walking into the garden, calling each one by name.