When a young man makes bad choices, we say he is lost. When a young woman drops out of college and refuses to work, we say she is lost. When a man’s career is over and he wallows, depressed and inert, we say he is lost. These people are lost because they have no plans, no goals, no ambition.
But even those with ambition can wake up lost. You lose a job. You fail repeatedly. You are forced to re-evaluate. Imagine trying to put your life back together after a divorce—even if you are the “innocent” party. It is devastating—and on top of the grief and hurt and anger, there may be a palpable sense of lost-ness.
You find yourself asking, “Who am I? What am I doing? What do I want to be? Where is my life headed?” Anyone can wake up to find themselves adrift and at sea.
I love to read news stories about people rescued from the wilderness. What if you were in a plane crash and wound up alone on a mountainside, struggling to find food, water, and shelter? Nights are cold, days are hot. Everything you eat makes you sick. What little water you can find seems only to make you sicker. You wander through the thickest brush for days, hoping to find a road or some sign of civilization—then when you are rescued, the whole world sees pictures of you—and your fifteen minutes of fame finds you dirtier and more scratched and bruised than you have ever been. You are sunburned, with leaves in your hair, an oozing rash from poison ivy, and a generous coating of bugs and filth. Why? Because you were LOST.
When Jesus looked at the crowds in the towns and villages of Israel, they looked lost.
“When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them, because they were weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd” Matthew 9:36.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd. But you have to stay close to Him. Lost-ness does not happen only to young people who lack ambition. If anything, the ambitious among us can end up in a worse state because they may pursue their own plans for years and years before surrendering to the Shepherd Who knows what He made them to do and be.
When you wander off on your own plan, blazing your own trail, you will end up lost, trapped in some existential dead-end, with no choice but to come back to Jesus. Return to Him today. He loves you! He feels compassion for the lost! He knows how much you have suffered in the thorns of the wilderness.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” Matthew 6:33.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” Proverbs 3:5-6.
Don’t spend another day LOST.
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