All who wander are not lost

Good morning all,

I do not know many of your stories yet and you do not know many of mine. We will have many long years to share stories, of course. I look forward to hearing yours and sharing mine. One of the things you will learn about me quickly is that I spend a lot of time getting lost. That phrase that says "he can't find his way out of a paper bag" is one that speaks truth for me. I remember that as a child I would often get lost under the covers as morning came and be unable to find my way out of the coverlet. I have a vivid memory screaming for my mother after becoming trapped under my Kentucky blue blanket. Mark, who has an incredible sense of direction, is becoming used to my penchant for being lost. For example, I was 15 minutes late coming home last night because I got lost in Red Springs. I know that sounds ridiculous to those of you who could draw a map of Red Springs with your eyes closed. I just could not make my brain figure out the way home. So, I did what I often do, I turned on the GPS. In 45 seconds I was pointed in the right direction and headed home.

If you flip through the Bible, you find many people who spent time lost and wandering. Of course, you think of the Israelites. They spent not 15 minutes but 40 years wandering in the desert until they found their way to the Promised Land. There is that joke that if Moses had just stopped and asked for directions they would have arrived years sooner. However, if you dig deeper into the story, you find that the journey was formative for those poor lost souls. The people of Israel had to be broken. That had to grow to trust the Lord.

In Numbers 32, Moses said, "7 Why do you discourage the Israelites from going over into the land the LORD has given them? 8 This is what your fathers did when I sent them from Kadesh Barnea to look over the land. 9 After they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and viewed the land, they discouraged the Israelites from entering the land the LORD had given them. 10 The LORD's anger was aroused that day and he swore this oath: 11 'Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years old or more who came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob- 12 not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the LORD wholeheartedly.' 13 The LORD's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the desert forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

The Israelites did not choose to follow the Lord wholeheartedly. They did not put their whole trust in His grace. They let fear guide them rather than the Word of God. We, of course, do the same thing. We take matters into our own hands rather than wait and pray for God's direction. We marry that person because we think our parents want us to rather than waiting to be called into a marriage by God. We take that drink to make ourselves feel better rather than putting our worries and hurts at the feet of the cross. We take something from our employer because they owe us, after all.

Yet we are not lost in sin. We are not trapped in our mistakes. They Israelites, as a people, had a second chance just as we do. Sometimes it takes that moment when we hit rock bottom, when we are lost, that we are willing to reach out to the hand of Jesus and get pulled out of sin.

Next time you are lost, I invite you to see what you can learn on the journey. Perhaps you come across a lovely patch of wild lilies. Perhaps you will find a farmer's stand that you didn't know was there. Perhaps when you get completely lost and hit rock bottom, you will realize just how much God loves you.

I will leave you today with a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor, "You will think of other ways to get lost, or to accept that you really have gotten lost through no choice of your own. It can happen anywhere, in all kinds of ways. You can get lost on your way home You can get lost looking for love. You can get lost between jobs. You can get lost looking for God. However, it happens, take heart. Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too. All it takes is one of them to find you. All it takes is you to find one of them. However it happens, you could do worse than to kneel down and ask a blessing, remembering how many knees have kissed this altar before you."

Blessings,
Mary Frances