My daughter was around two years old at the time. You know, that wonderful age where children start to experiment with independence? We were headed to a venue which I knew would be crowded and I had told her that she needed to hold daddy’s hand the whole time we were there so we wouldn’t be separated. She did hold my hand for a short while before seeing something intriguing and squirming free to pursue it. Instead of forcing our hand to hand connection, I decided to follow closely and see where it was that she wanted to go. She wandered for a few minutes and then stopped. She looked around at the vast forest of legs surrounding her. None of them looked familiar.
Where is daddy?
I could see fear in her eyes as she realized that she was lost. As her lip started to quiver and tears formed in her eyes with the gravity or her situation becoming apparent, I knelt down to her level, picked her up and wrapped my arms around her. I never “punished” her for her sin. What would be the point? Our divine “Father” doesn’t punish us for our sins either. Our punishment is always self inflicted.
She was never lost.
I was with her the whole time.
How does being lost affect a person? I’ve actually been lost in the mountains, so I’ll tell you my experience. I had an overwhelming sense of being in danger as I had lost my reference point and was in a place of not belonging. Low grade panic and then despair set in as I had no means of finding my way back to where I should be. Fortunately, someone eventually found me and brought me home. I noticed in hindsight, that my thinking while lost, had turned almost entirely inward. Self preservation, self pity, self loathing for getting lost. Me, me, me. This is quite the opposite to how we were made to live. Once I was back in a place of safety, however, I was able to think of others.
What is our “North Star” then, which gives us a reference point for life? I believe it is love—as in “Agape”. Why? Well, in scripture, John tells us that God IS love. That love IS God’s very essence, which means that God cannot behave in a way that is not love and still remain God. If God is existence itself and nothing exists outside of God as Paul writes in the letter to the Colossians (I also agree with him), this is an important reference point to have. It’s impossible to be lost when you hold hands with Love Himself!
I had a conversation with someone last summer where he had expressed great concern that I do not believe in a literal, eternal place of torment called “hell” where postmortem unbelievers will be eternally tortured for their unbelief. He said that people like me have no concern for the lost.
This could not be further from the truth! I and others like me have utmost concern for the lost. We just tend to define who is lost differently than our evangelical Christian counterparts.
I think that the most “lost” people around are the ones who believe that love involves coercion of any kind, that love involves retributive punishment, that love is conditional to our “correct doctrines” and limited to our earthly existence. I believe that there are many religious people who are truly lost as they have lost the reference point to what love even is. If you need a reminder, here’s how Paul defined love in 1Corinthians 13:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.”
Now read that again, substituting the word “God” for “love”.
What if being “lost” isn’t such a bad thing? What if it is not our responsibility to be “found”. In Luke 15, Jesus tells two parables. One about a lost sheep and the other about a lost coin. In both stories, the “God” character makes the lost item the singular focus of His relentless search until it is found and restored to right belonging. The lost item contributes NOTHING to being found! In fact, the only thing required of it to be found IS to be lost in the first place.
What if, as Paul tells the Athenians on Mars hill in Acts 17–you know, those “lost” pagans who worshiped an “unknown god”, that they are already Gods own offspring and that they already live, move and exist within God? (Acts 17:28)
What if God truly is love with no conditions and we cannot possibly be separated from Him? What if God is like a father following a distracted two year old in a crowd, just waiting for us to come to the end of our wandering so we could be scooped up into loving arms?
What if “being lost” is nothing but a state of mind—a way of thinking and as Paul told the Athenians, we just need to change our minds (repent) about how we understand God? Maybe, if we changed our minds about how we think of God, we would recognize that we have already been experiencing love all along!
Are you lost? Are you exhausted from working so hard to do the right things and believe the right doctrines in order to please a God who is already head over heels in love with you and just wants you to slow down enough that He can pick you up in loving embrace?
Change your mind about who God is. Know that God has always been just like Jesus. Know that you are the focus of His search and He will NEVER stop pursuing you. Know that you are safe and always have been.
What does it look like today to not be lost—to be holding loves hand? I think it looks like not selfishly hoarding toilet paper, masks and other perceived items of scarcity. It looks like putting the needs of someone else who has less than me above my own perception of lack and sharing resources with them. It means being willing to inconvenience myself to protect the vulnerable from COVID-19. It means checking in on others to make sure they are ok and have everything they need.
Lostness is only perception and there isn’t even one person who can remain lost forever!