Oops! I am Lost!

Have you ever realized that you are lost? Maybe you are driving down the road and it suddenly dawns on you that you have no idea where you are or how to get to where you want to be. By being lost I am talking about not knowing how to get where you want to go and not being able to get back to where you came from. I am talking about being totally lost. It is a strange feeling that I describe as feeling helpless.

I have been blessed with a great sense of direction. Somehow I am able to picture in my mind where I want to go and I am able to get there. If I have been somewhere one time, most of the time I am able to go there again, even if it is many years later. When I was six years old we moved to Fresno, California. We were only there a couple of weeks when Mom took us somewhere, just us kids and her, and on the way home she got lost. She has often laughed about it because I told her how to get home. I can honestly say I have only been lost one time in my life.

I lived for thirty five years on the north coast of California. Much of that time we lived in a city which was about two hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. Although it was the “big city” and a get away destination for many people I was only in the San Francisco about seven or eight times in my life. On most of those visits I was passing through on the highway and had only actually visited the city three times. It was in San Francisco that I had my “lost” experience.
My wife and I had been to Bakersfield for a meeting and were returning home. Any trip out of our area to the “Valley” was a long trip. Driving to Bakersfield was a hard nine hour drive. Through the years we had explored the quickest routes and had found a route that would take us through the East Bay area and junction I-5 that saved a lot of time. However, I had never taken that route back and was unfamiliar with it. On this particular trip we were going along when out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign and quickly took the exit. The moment I had committed to the exit and there was no turning back I knew I had made a mistake. It was the wrong exit and before we knew it we were dropped into the middle of San Francisco!

Now understand I am just a country boy. The biggest city that I have lived in during my adult life is the one that I live in now which has a population of fifty-three thousand. However, I was raised and lived in a city of three thousand people. It had no stop lights, no banks, and no car dealerships. It had a couple of grocery stores, bars, one gas station and was about a mile and a half from one end to the other. The tallest building in town was probably the two story house that I lived in, simply because it sat on the side of a steep hill and was actually three stories on that side.

So here I am in San Francisco and I have no idea where I am in comparison to where I have been before. I look up to get direction from the sun and all I can see is skyscrapers. Everything is totally foreign to me. I tell my wife not to worry we will find US 101 and that will get us out of there. I just needed to find out what direction to head in. I look to my left and sitting next to me is a man on a motorcycle so I ask him to tell me how to find US 101.
The nice gentleman says it is simple. Just make a turn and follow the road a bit, make another turn and another and follow the road. It would take us where we wanted to go. That sounded simple enough, so we set off to follow those easy directions. We followed them exactly as he said and came to a stop light. I looked around to see where we were and was astonished to find we were sitting at the stop light we had been at when the nice man gave us directions. We had spent the last twenty minutes going in a large circle; it is hard to know you are doing that in San Francisco with their winding streets. I imagine he is still laughing, I know I am.

After searching for another half hour or so we finally found a gas station and were able to purchase a map. With the map we soon found our way out of the “big city” and headed back to the sanctity of the small town.

I remember another time, when I was very young. We were again returning from a trip to the “Valley” this time through Sacramento. Mom was driving and was not real familiar with the road. I was a sleep in the back and remember waking up to hear Mom and Dad talking about the route to take. Dad settled back to sleep and Mom kept the pedal to the metal.
An hour or more latter Mom asked Dad a question and suddenly he was wide awake. In fact, we were all wide awake. The question she asked had to do with Grass Valley, California. Grass Valley is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which were in the exact opposite direction from where we were should have been headed. We were headed up I-80 toward Reno, Nevada!

Somewhere along the way Mom had taken the wrong highway and headed in the wrong direction. Dad got out the map and we began to work our way back to where we needed to go. Until his dying day, over thirty years later, Dad would laugh about the night Mom tried to take him to Reno to get a divorce.
You know, it doesn’t take much to get started in the wrong direction. It doesn’t take a lot of effort or planning to get lost. It can happen to the best of us and it can happen quickly. Just a wrong turn is all it takes. Just a moment when we are not paying attention or maybe it was just a bad decision.
We pastored in the Ozarks for seven years. Not long after moving there we had a “Singin‘” one Sunday afternoon. One of the men in the Church invited a Christian Blue Grass band to come and sing. After the “Singin’” was over I was talking with them, just making friends. They told me there was a Christian Blue Grass pickin’’ and grinning that took place once a month and invited me to come and be a part of it. I told them I wasn’t a bluegrass player but would enjoy coming out and asked where it was. They said it was in the Friendship Community building. Well, being new to the area I had to ask where that was.

I will never forget this as long as I live. One of the men slowly leaned back in the pew. He stroked his chin with his right hand, his left arm crossed under the right elbow. He tilted his head back and got a far away look in his eyes as he looked toward the ceiling. The silence lingered as his companions sat and watch in reverend silence. Finally after two or three moments of pondering he looked at me and said, “Huh, I guess you just can’t get there from here!” He never did tell me how to get there and it was just a little ways from where we were.

In life it is so easy to get turned around and lost. It is so easy to find yourself headed in the wrong direction. It happens so quickly as you suddenly find you have made a mistake somewhere back down the road and are now in a situation where you have no idea where you are. Suddenly you are a washed with a feeling of helplessness, even hopelessness. Despair sets as you realize you haven’t any idea where you are or where you are going.

What do we do in this situation? Is there a remedy? Is there any hope? Can we get there from here? Oops, we are lost!

I have to wonder if David was feeling this way when he wrote:

“Show me the path where I should walk, O LORD; point out the right road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.” Ps 25:4-5

When we don’t know where we are or how to get to where we need to go, it is past time to pull out the map and get direction. Our map in life is the Word of God. We can depend on God to show us, teach us and to guide us in the road that will take us safely through life. We can trust in Him for direction in the course our live should take and how to stay on that course. We need to let him show us, teach us and guide us. This will keep us from being lost.

Just a thought! God Bless!