There are many passages in the Bible that talk about being lost, whether that be a person who’s lost or something that is.
I wonder if you could name any?
Maybe it’s the one sheep that was lost? The coin that was lost? The time when Jesus’ parents couldn’t find him because he was in the Temple? The prodigal son?
Each of these teach us something interesting. Whenever something is lost, there always seems to be a solution. They can always be found.
I wonder if you’ve ever gotten lost before? I once got lost in the supermarket as a child and could’t find my mum. I had to go to the front desk where they said my mum’s name out loud over the speaker. That was scary, but it turned out fine.
Or maybe you’ve not got lost in the literal sense, but you’ve felt pretty lost in and of yourself? Like you don’t know what’s going on around you, as if you have lost a sense of who you are or even what your purpose is?
I wonder how that may have felt? Lonely? Isolating? Intimidating?
This is something that I think most of us face in our lives, and it can feel scary at times, but what I’ve found is that when I share my worries, or I come and bring those things to God, that feeling of being lost turns into being found.
You may remember the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) the tax collector who climbs the tree to see Jesus as he is entering Jericho. Jesus sees him and calls him down and invites himself over for dinner. Well at the end of this passage in verse 10 Jesus says, ‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’ We know that Zacchaeus wasn't very well liked, people knew him as a sinner, and so he was probably on the outside of most things. You could say that his corrupt way of tax collecting had I guess made him loose his way, that he was in fact lost. He was taking money from people unjustly and had gone so far down that path that others had despised him for it.
What we learn from Jesus is that no matter how lost we may be we can ALWAYS be found. Being found means that we are not only found by someone, but we also get to find something new, something different, something better! We find the welcoming embrace of the Father, just as with the story of the prodigal son.
Let’s come to God when we are lost and not turn to other places that ultimately won’t satisfy us. Let us remember the promise that Jesus gave when we said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst’. That when we find ourselves in Jesus, we can trust that through him we are no longer lost, we are found, and in him we find all we need.