‘THERE FOR YOU’

On an episode of Seinfeld, when an attractive couple they know breaks up, Jerry and Elaine dream up an ingenious way to be sure they are first in line with the suddenly romantically available. They decide to call up the broken-hearted just to say “I’M THERE FOR YOU.” Like a lot of the phrases from Sienfeld “I’m there for you” has become a catch-phrase. I hear a lot of people using it. But I wonder what it really means, if it’s really true. And I’ve come to the conclusion that despite everything we’d like to believe about the human race, we are all basically self-centered creatures (present company included) who can be “there for” others as long as it’s convenient and does not interfere with our own personal agenda.

Now maybe there are absolutely lovely people somewhere in the world who will really be “there for you” 100% of the time, but I haven’t met them, and if you live long enough, I think eventually everybody will disappoint you at some time. This is my opinion of the human race. I know it’s very pessimistic, but sorry, I think it’s true. We are sinful, self-centered beings. We (hopefully) strive to be better than we are, but basically you can’t please all the people all the time, and if you put your faith in other people to make your life happy, you will eventually be disappointed.

But that is not the point I came here to make. I wast thinking about the phrase “there for you” and I came to the conclusion that the only person who is always there for you 100% of the time is God. Because He is God, and not imperfect, and not sinful, and the only agenda He has is making the universe the best possible universe it can be, and that includes every living person.

The thing about God, though, is that when you say He is THERE for you, you have to really think about WHERE that THERE is. Sure, He is there, He is always there—but WHERE? Well, He is where God should be, in the most perfect place, and He wants you to be THERE with Him. That’s where, ideally, you should be, right there with God, if you want your life to be the best life it can be, right? Sometimes you might feel that God is far away, and when you feel that way, then somebody moved, and guess what? It wasn’t Him. Why would He move out of the perfect place? Pretty clear to see that if you were still in the perfect place, then God would be near, right? So God is always “there for you” but maybe sometimes you aren’t “there” where you should be.

But here’s the best part of all. I remembered this verse in Isaiah (59:1) that describes it perfectly: “Behold, the Lord’s had is not so short that it cannot save.” So I have this image of God as a kind of X-man—not to be disrespectful at all, but I think the image works—God is like this X-man, isn’t there one who is like made of rubber and can stretch incredible lengths? I don’t know too much about X-men, but I have this image of some supernatural being who can stretch out His arm as far as it needs to go, and tap you on the shoulder, or take you by the hand, or pull you by the arm, or whatever He needs to do to get you back to where you need to be, right next to Him.

So God is always “there for you” but sometimes you yourself are not “there.” But if you keep thinking about God, and trusting in Him, then eventually you will get back “there,” where you need to be.