The old woman at the coffee shop was crying into her hands. Her shoulders shook as she whispered to her friend, “I have made such a mess of everything. How could God ever want someone like me?” I could not help but overhear, and my heart broke for her. I wanted to lean over and tell her what I wish someone had told me years ago: that God’s love does not wait for us to get our act together. It runs to meet us in our mess.
There was a time in my life when I believed I had crossed a line too far. The mistakes were real. The pain I had caused was real. The shame felt like a permanent stain that no amount of scrubbing could remove. I remember sitting in my car after another sleepless night, staring at my reflection in the rearview mirror and not recognizing the person looking back. The voice in my head was relentless: “This is who you really are. This is all you will ever be.”
But that is when I discovered something that changed everything. In Romans 5:20, Paul writes, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” I had read those words countless times before, but that morning they landed differently. They were not just words on a page anymore. They were a lifeline thrown into the deepest waters of my despair.
The grace Paul was talking about was not some abstract concept. It was personal. It was powerful. And it was pursuing me even when I was running away from it. I began to understand that my sin was not the end of my story, it was the very place where God’s love chose to write its most beautiful chapter.
Jesus told a story that became my story. A young man takes his inheritance and wastes it all. He ends up hungry, broken, and alone, feeding pigs just to survive. When he finally comes to his senses and decides to go home, he prepares a speech about how unworthy he is. But his father sees him while he is still far off and runs to him. Not walks. Runs. The father embraces him before he can even finish his rehearsed apology. That is the picture of God’s heart toward us in Luke 15:11-32.
I used to think I had to clean myself up before I could come to God. I thought I needed to earn my way back into His good graces. But that father did not wait for his son to shower and change clothes. He ran to him covered in mud and shame and threw his arms around him anyway. That is how love works. It does not wait. It runs.
The same Jesus who ran to that prodigal son is the one who said in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” He did not come for people who had it all figured out. He came for people like me. People like that woman in the coffee shop. People who feel like they have wandered too far and fallen too hard.
I think about Peter, who swore he would die before denying Jesus, but when the pressure came, he denied even knowing Him. Three times. The Bible tells us that when Peter realized what he had done, he went out and wept bitterly. Can you imagine the weight of that moment? But after Jesus rose from the dead, He did not give Peter a lecture. He gave him breakfast by the lake and asked him one simple question: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15). Love did not require Peter to grovel. It invited him to start again.
That is what God’s love does. It does not keep a record of wrongs. It does not hold our past against us. First Corinthians 13:5 tells us that love keeps no record of being wronged. When God looks at us, He does not see our failures first. He sees His children. He sees the people He died to save.
The cross was not God’s backup plan when we messed up. It was His first plan from the beginning. Before we ever took our first breath or made our first mistake, He knew exactly what it would cost to love us completely. And He decided we were worth it.
Sometimes I still struggle with the voices that try to drag me back to shame. But I have learned to speak back to them with truth. When guilt whispers that I am too broken, I remember that God specializes in broken things. When shame says I am too far gone, I remember that His love reaches farther than any sin can go. Psalm 103:12 promises that He removes our sins “as far as the east is from the west.”
The woman in the coffee shop does not know me, but if I could tell her one thing, it would be this: your mess is not your message. God’s love is. Your past is not your future. His grace is. You are not too far gone, too broken, or too lost for love to find you.
Because love always runs faster than shame. And it never gets tired of running.
