Lost in Familiar Territory

Psalm 119:176
I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands.

A funny thing happened to me on my way to sleep. God placed a memory in my head. We all have memories, some good, some not so good, but they all play a part in making us who we are today.

This memory had been erased from my everyday thoughts forever ago. When it came to mind I knew it had to be from God, because it was so vivid. It made me laugh a little when it came to mind and at first I thought it incidental. Then I spoke the story out loud to my husband and began to mull it over in my thoughts. I thought to myself what on earth triggered that memory. Then I realized it wasn’t anything on earth that brought the memory to mind. It was God. He was speaking to me using my own personal parable.

I could not have been more than four, because we lived in a different house when I began kindergarten. We lived on the corner of Oak and Main Street, and an alley ran down the center of our block. In the early 1970’s that block was my reality. As long as I did not leave the block I could ride my Mark 5 Speed Race pedal racecar from dawn until dusk. I ran with a group of approximately 8 kids between the ages four and eight. We were a gang and we all looked after each other. The boy who lived kitty corner from my house was my age and my best friend. We did everything together. This is important because we were the youngest.

One sunny afternoon we were all standing on the corner as far down Oak Street as I was allowed to go. I’m not sure how the whole incident started, but I am positive that I was the instigator of the outcome. I also know for a fact that the outcome was a direct result of my best friend and I proving we were no longer babies. After all at the time baby was the worst four-letter word we knew.

It all went down like this…. I being the instigator probably made a very bold statement that went something like this “We’re not babies, we’ll prove it, we can cross the street without a grownup.” At this point my misguided best friend dropped his chin to his chest, thinking she’s doing it again, because all the misguiding he usually received was from me. If I had to guess I’m almost positive one of the older boys replied “Prove it, I double dog dare you.” Walking away from such a dare would just prove that we were babies, and I was not about to be called a baby.

Grabbing my partner in crime by the hand we crossed the street. Turning around with a sigh of relief, after all we had not been hit by a car, in a very young lady like manner I stuck out my tongue.

Crossing one street wasn’t hard, so we crossed another and another and so on until we came to a small park. We had played in this park many times before with our parents, so we found no reason not to play. We played for what seemed like forever in this very familiar little park. We never realized the very true fact that we were lost. We did not have a clue as to which way to go to get home. After all we had gotten to the park by crossing random streets. Yet we had been to the park often and we not at all concerned with the potential outcome of being lost.

In reality we didn’t play in the park very long when we began to come up with a plan to get home. We had not left ourselves a trail of breadcrumbs, so we thought we were on our own. Here is the important part, as we were looking for home, our parents were looking for us. As we tried to back track and find our way back seeking out familiar streets, our parents knew which way we had gone. They met us as we left the park to lead us home.

Our relationship with God is very much the same. As Christians we look back on our lives in the world thinking that particular things of the world didn’t hurt us. So we let a little bit of our old selves back into our lives. Then step-by-step, inch-by-inch our old selves creep right back in. It can be small things, which seem incidental. We may pick up a bad word, read a borderline inappropriate book or watch a questionable movie. Before you ever see it happening there is no difference between the born again you and the old you.

As Christians we don’t just get up one morning and decide today I will sin. As humans there are no decisions to be made, we are sinners. The problem is we are so familiar with our old selves that we fail to see that we are once again lost.

The awesome thing is Daddy God makes it possible to find our way back home. And we don’t have to carry a bag of breadcrumbs or a box of stuffing to leave ourselves a trail. All we have to do is turn around, look behind us for the way home and God or Father will meet us right there. We don’t even have to step off the curb. He is at the entrance of the park waiting for us to turn around and look for our way home. Our Father is waiting to guide us every step of the way.

In reality we are all sinners and periodically stray. If you say you don’t you are a hypocrite and a liar, and by making such a statement you have sinned. My breadcrumb paths alone would keep the pigeons in Chicago fat and happy. But our loving Father Daddy God is always watching and waiting for us to look toward home. It is as simple as turning around.