These famous words from the hymn "Amazing Grace" certainly describe the starting point for many of our journeys, and journeys of faith are no different. Right when we think we have everything figured out, we discover that we're actually lost and need help. When we dare to ask for help is when we start to be found.
I had this experience when Joan and I started our trip to Germany. We met in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport so easily without any real planning ahead of time that I commented "I know my way around airports pretty well. I figured we could find our way." That was in America. After 10 hours on an airplane flying through the night to Frankfort, Germany we woke up (actually we hadn't slept much) to a completely different airport, where the signs were mostly German and our cell phones didn't work. We saw a sign that said "Meeting Place" so we started walking to that place assuming that maybe in this country everyone ended up at one common meeting place. When we got there there was still no sign of our son and his family. We were lost. We had no German money, no cell phone and we didn't know where our family was. We knew that we needed to talk to our family to let them know when we were so that we could find them and they could find us.
I exchanged some dollars for Euros, asked how to operate a pay phone (how quickly we forget in this age of cell phones) and finally got hold of our son Stuart. They were back at the gate where we had come out after customs. They were there waiting for us and would have found us if I hadn't been so anxious just to start walking without any idea of where I was going. We found them and it was a grand reunion with son and daughter-in-law and grandkids after five months apart.
As I started reflecting this Lent, I was struck by the reality that our faith journeys are like that. Right when we think we have everything all figured out, when we try to go off on our own, when we trust random signs more than trusted friends and family, when we are out of communication- we are in trouble and usually lost. When we take the time before we start to talk with God and when we keep those lines of communication open through prayer, then God will find us and guide us and walk with us on our journey. Prayer is our connection with God, and if we find that we can't reach God through our impromptu personal prayers, we can always fall back on the "Old Fashioned" prayer that Jesus taught us so long ago:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen
As we prayer this prayer together in hospital rooms, in church, in mission trips, in crisis and even on international plane rides we know that the God who created us is with on on every journey of life. Amen
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