Lost and Found | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Lost and Found | Previous Challenge Entry
By Loni Bowden-Horn
04/09/15
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There was a chill in the air on that night in April. I felt so alone. I pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes to shield myself from the wind. I peddled my bicycle around town searching for empty pop cans and bottles to turn in for cash. I had a gnawing hunger in my belly that needed to be filled.

I felt so empty. After my father had passed away of a sudden heart attack at the age of thirty five, I wanted nothing to do with God. I couldn't understand how a loving God would take a boy's father away from him at such a young age.

I turned to alcohol to take the edge off. The liquid burned my throat as I guzzled it down. I needed the booze to numb my senses and dull my pain. The liquor never could quench my weary soul.

I shook my fist at God and screamed at the top of my lungs. "I don't need you in my life. From now on I will do things my own way. I want to run as far away from you as I can. You could have saved my father, but took him home early."

I continued to spiral downward as alcohol consumed my whole life. I lost my job because I didn't bother going to work for days at a time. I blacked out most days because I didn't want to want to remember. My so called friends left me after the money ran out. My mom was depressed and cried herself to sleep.

I couldn't recognize that man in the mirror staring back at me. It looked like I had aged ten years. The skin around my brown eyes sagged. The pupils of my eyes were red and blurry. I didn't want to live like this any longer.

Since I had nowhere else to turn, I decided to give one more chance. My plea was simple. "Help me find my way back to you."

Maybe God didn't love me either. After all I had rejected him. Several weeks went by before I heard God's voice whisper in my ear, “Elton, go back to that dumpster by the apartment complex that you were just at and look again."

I was so exhausted from that long day that I almost didn't listen. I slowly stumbled towards the container and peered in. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things. There was a small hand sticking out of a corrugated box. It was a tiny baby wrapped in a soiled pink blanket soaked with blood. I gently lifted the baby into my arms. The baby's umbilical cord was still attached. The baby girl had deep blue eyes that sparkled in the light and chubby cheeks. I called her Hope, because for the first time in years that is what I felt.

How could anyone abandon a baby? A mother must be hurting or scared to leave her baby to die.

I'm was relieved when the paramedic told me the baby was alive and well thanks to my heroic efforts.

"This was a miracle from God,” I shouted from the rooftops.

I dusted off my father's old worn out leather Bible and it fell open to the passage of John 4:10-14:

"Jesus answered her, if you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you. Give me some water to drink ......Jesus replied, Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks some of the water I give him will never be thirsty again, but the water I will give him will become in Him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life."

Relief washed across my face as I realized that Jesus was offering me a cup of living water that would heal my soul. Jesus was also abandoned and left to die from those who loved him but he came back from the grave so we could live. Jesus’ love satisfied my thirsty soul.

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