As I watched my girls playing on the beach one day I was alarmed when a little pre-school girl came out of the surf alone crying uncontrollably. I ran to her and asked her if she was lost but she was sobbing too hard to answer me so I picked her up in my arms. Immediately, a teenage boy who had been sitting near nearby with a big group of friends ran over and asked if he could help me find her parents. I was very surprised that a teenage guy who was busy hanging out with his buddies would be willing to do this, but he explained that when he was little he had gotten lost at Disneyland and never forgot how distressed he had felt. We searched up and down the beach with her screaming in my arms until the girl’s father finally spotted us, ran up and took her into his arms. Being equally upset as his daughter, he wasn’t composed enough to thank us for finding her. Of course, that didn’t matter; she had been found by her Daddy.
After this incident I thought about how Jesus said He came to save that which was lost. I also thought about the image we sometimes have of the “lost” as those who are choosing to walk in darkness. At times we imagine that they are willfully choosing destructive patterns of behavior and that they should know better. But there is nothing voluntary about the state of being lost. Getting lost is a state of helplessness or bewilderment which overtakes someone. You would never purposefully show up at an unknown city, rent a car, and begin to drive aimlessly until you became lost. The way we become lost is we begin heading on a certain path we think is right and then suddenly and distressingly are assaulted with the fact that we have no idea where we are, where we are going, or how to get home.
I was very moved by the teenage boy who jumped up to help me when everyone else on the beach was happy to ignore me. What motivated him to reach out was that he tapped into his personal experience and let himself remember the pain of a time in his life when he too had been helplessly lost.
At another time when I was hurrying back to my car at a downtown parking lot to refill the parking meter I saw a young college student slumped against a wall with a look of rage on her face. Going against my gut reaction to get away from her I asked her if she was ok. At first this made her madder and she indignantly shouted, “Of course I’m ok!”.
For some reason I pressed her and asked, “Are you sure?”
Surprisingly, her anger melted into deep sorrow and she began to cry bitterly. I asked her if I could just pray with her and she asked, “Who are you going to pray to?”
I answered that I would pray to Jesus and she immediately pushed away from me and sadly said, “He wouldn’t want to help me.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised that she clearly believed He existed yet didn’t think He cared.
Indignantly she replied, “Because I’m Jewish and Jesus hates Jews because they crucified Him.”
Wow – I couldn’t believe the mixture of faith and confusion at the same time. I sat on the floor next to her and gently reminded her that when Jesus came to Earth He actually chose to come as a Jew and I told her the story about the time that Jesus wept over Jerusalem and grieved for the Jewish people that they did not recognize His visit to them. By the grace of God, her heart was moved by the Holy Spirit and she not only allowed me to pray for her but invited Jesus into her life!
We all get lost throughout our lives. If we allow ourselves to remember this state of overwhelming confusion, pain, loneliness, distress, or even numbness we will be more aware of the lost all around us.
~Marilyn Schuler
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