What do you do when you realize that you are hopelessly lost? How do you get back home when you do not even know where home is?
The Sum of all fears.
One of my less pleasant memories as a child was going to the market with my mother. Anyone who has been to an open air market in Accra, Ghana will know it is not for the faint of heart. To my young mind the market was a loud sea of unfriendly strangers moving with a scary intensity, in a crazy maze of passages and alleys littered with various menacing obstacles. Add in the heat, the various unpleasant smells and the ever present swarm of flies and you get the perfect recipe for unpleasantness. To make matters worse, each experience lasted longer than it needed to because everyone was haggling. This ritual of false endearments from sellers, promising the buyer the best product in the market at the lowest possible price, the false nonchalance of the buyers, the buyer’s exaggerated shock at the quoted price, the well rehearsed dance as either party tried to get the better of the other, each swearing that their family would starve if the exchange happened at anything but their preferred price, and the finale with both parties reluctantly “giving in”, was performed over tomatoes, fish, onions and all the other things on my mother's list. It was was excruciating to watch for a young boy who did not want to be there in the first place. However this was not the worst part of going to the market for me. To me the market was the perfect place to get lost. Weaving through the throng of people and the chaos, I desperately clung to my mother's hand as she deftly navigated the craziness, all the while haunted by the constant though, 'what if we get separated?' What if she let go of my hand for a brief moment for whatever reason and someone bumped into me and I fell and she turned around and couldn't find me and I got pushed further into the crowd and got lost? Thankfully that nightmare never came true. My relief at the end of each such expedition is indescribable.
Since becoming a father I have had the unpleasant experience of almost losing a loved one in a crowded place. My family was at a water park. I had our three kids with me in a long line waiting to get on a slide. My wife had elected to sit this one out. I had just checked on the kids and every one was accounted for standing patiently in front of me. I looked up to see why the line was so long and moving so slowly, didn't find a good answer and looked down at the kids again. In the maybe 10 seconds that had elapsed since I looked away, I realized I now had two instead of three kids in line with me. Our youngest was no where to be seen. "Where did your sister go?", I asked the other two. "I don't know", they replied as baffled as I was. She hadn't gone up ahead in the line and was not behind. How am I going to find a three year old in this mass of people. I was beginning to get frantic, looking around desperately trying to determine my next move. I didn't have a phone to call my wife to let her know what was going on, I was afraid that if my daughter was nearby and I left my position in the line she would not be able to find me if she decided to come back. Then as I scanned the crowd I saw my wife approaching us. She had decided to come see how we were doing and, of all the things, I spotted this little three year old girl, my three year old, heading towards her mother. Oh the relief! This all happened within about ten minutes so the child had never been technically lost, just briefly misplaced but my mind played out all the possible ways this could have been bad and all the possible things I would need to do to find her. It turns out she decided she did not want to go on the ride any more and so went to look for her mother without telling me her plans. Kids!
Having faced the fear of losing my loved one in a crowd of people, once as a son and then as a father, I learned from the second experience that I needn't have feared in the first. As a father if my child ever got lost, her being found was my job not hers. I understand now that, if any of those terrifying scenarios I imagined in the market had ever happened, my mother would have stopped the whole place if possible to find me. My security and my being found depended on the one who loved me and not on myself. As a child I could not possibly understand the love of a parent for their child but as a parent I know that I will find that child if it's the last thing I do.
Having faced the fear of losing a loved one in a crowd of people, once as a child and then as a father, I learned from the second experience that I need not have feared in the first.
Are we lost?
The bible describes the human race as sheep gone astray, all of us. Being compared to dumb animals like sheep is not flattering and I think most of us would beg to differ. We who sit atop the food chain are more than hapless sheep and certainly know where we are and where we are going. In one of my favorite stories in the bible, Jesus was going from one place to another on foot, followed by a crowd of people. Among those clamoring to see him was a small man named Zacchaeus. Looking for a vantage point from which to see Jesus, he climbed a tree. Jesus stopped under the tree where Zacchaeus was perched and, looking up at the little man, invited himself to the man’s home. There they had a conversation of which we are not privy. After that meeting Zacchaeus, the greedy tax collector who had accumulated wealth through extortion, joyfully announced he was giving half his wealth to the poor and going to make a generous restitution to whomever he had defrauded. Jesus responded to this radical transformation with these words:
Today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:9, 10)
I’m sure before that encounter Zacchaeus would not have considered himself lost. Successful by some standards though hated by his countrymen, he must have thought he was exactly where he wanted to be, in perfect control of his life, doing exactly what pleased him. This is the kind of man Jesus described as lost, the kind he came to seek and save.
Being lost to me is being far from home, far from all that is safe and familiar and good with no way of getting back. The bible describes the human race as being in this condition. Something happened to the human race that changed our nature and destiny forever. Our original parents stopped trusting their maker and instead took their destiny into their own hands. Because man was never meant to live without God, this rebellion damaged an essential relationship and has set all men on a trajectory that takes us far away from home with God. In the millennia since this tragic event, we have forgotten where home is and what it was like. Our current existence has become all we know and can imagine. In fact just like Zacchaeus we are sure that we are not lost and that there is no other home besides this one. Even when we experience the vague longings that prompt us to "search for God" we look in all the wrong places. We can't find our way back even if we want to.
Being lost to me is being far from home, far from all that is safe and familiar and good with no way of getting back.
The way back.
I can imagine that being lost comes with feeling alone and abandoned. It certainly feels like we are alone and abandoned in this world when terrible things happen and we ask the question, "where is God when... ?" or, "if there is a loving God why does he allow...?" It does feel like we are on our own and that making our way in this dangerous world is entirely up to us. In response to those questions I am reminded of another time when a man, falsely accused and condemned to death, hung on a cross and experienced extreme sorrow because he was abandoned and forsaken by His Father. God the maker placed all the rebellion of the human race on the back of Jesus Christ. He allowed his beloved son to endure a horrible torture and death in place of every human being who lives, bearing the just punishment for our rebellion so that we may be forgiven and in order to make a way back home to the father. For every lost person on earth Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me". Like a parent who has lost a beloved child, God the Father has been on a search for his lost children and has shown that he will do anything to find them. We are too hopelessly lost to find our way back but thank God we do not have to. The Father has sent out a rescue party of one to search and find what was lost. All we are required to do is acknowledge we are lost, stop going the wrong directing and start trusting our father again. When you hear a voice calling your name, when this world feels wrong or unsatisfying, when something in you longs for more than pleasure or power or position, or praise from men, when the familiar longing for home strikes again and the urge to "find God" cannot be ignored it's because the father is looking for you. All you have to do is trust the one he has sent and come. Jesus is the only one who can bring you home because he came from home and he remembers the way back.
Like a parent who has lost a beloved child, God the Father has been on a search for his lost children and has shown that he will do anything to find them.
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