LOST

I've been trying to listen this week...you know, listen for what God may be saying or doing in and around my life. The word that I've consistently heard has been "lost." My wife and I love the television series LOST and have been catching up on season 2 by way of dvd. The show is wonderfully written and keeps the thread of lost-ness alive in each episode. It is a vice, I know, but all nice and no vice makes John a dullard.

I received a phone call from an old friend on Wednesday morning. She was a church member from bygone days and wanted to update me on her husband. They've had significant problems over the years, but in her description, she clearly said, "John, he's lost." And she wasn't using the word in the traditional church "lost or saved, in or out" manner. He has distanced himself from her, church, old friends and he's essentially existing in a separate reality.

Then I was working on a fundraising letter for a church that thinks too highly of itself, and I was flipping through Scripture for some fundraising verses (Lord, have mercy) and I happened to flip to Luke 15 - the lost chapter. It's filled with three parables, all dealing with something lost being found - sheep, a coin, and a son. Now I have no need to try and wrap all this up in some kind of blog-sermon bow-tie; here is what I'm feeling and you can take and make and shake and bake yourself.

The beauty of the LOST t.v. show is that the characters on the mysterious island are continually being found. Oh, they're still lost in a literal sense, but their souls are being found as they interact and experience one another. They are being found together. And although there are individual, personal moments, the overall story line continues to bang the gong of community - the only place where we can really be found. As to my old church friend, he's evidently trying to find himself apart from anyone else. Now I've no problem with him stepping away from church or religion as he's known it, but he's stepped into a vacuum of me, myself and I. And I fear he's really lost. Maybe he'll have one of those eureka moments out there somewhere, but I'm not sure. It's the error of the Ansel Adams photographs - no people, just nature. And as for Luke 15, each parable has a "together" aspect to it; someone searches for the lost sheep and then everybody celebrates, the woman finds the coin and the whole house parties, the prodigal returns and finds himself found in the arms of the father and the smell of steak on the grill.

Maybe (what a beautiful word) the only hope of us being found is being found together, with one another. Yes, some valleys must be crossed alone, but there's always a coming back to the camp or returning from the far country. And if we stick together, we might discover along the way that we're not as lost as we thought we were. If we can just stay together. And there's the rub. Sheep wander, coins fall between the cushions, and we're all prodigals in some sense. Many days, our tendency is to isolate ourselves; we're convinced nobody knows de truble I seen. But how arrogant is that? Ole' sweet, syrupy Robert Fulghum said all he needed to know he learned in kindergarten - one of those lessons being: holds hands when you're crossing the street, a.k.a., stay together. Losing our grip on one another and existing alone somehow, somewhere is truly the definition of lost; quite possibly just a stone's throw away from the definition of hell.