Last month my husband and I stayed overnight in one of my favorite cities. I’ve walked and driven its streets enough that I can usually get where I’m going without a map.
After a business dinner at a swanky restaurant, it was still fairly early in the night, so we headed out to find some live music. We walked several blocks from the restaurant to the busy street where folks were strolling in and out of bars. The beat of the music coming from each bar thumped in our ears with every passing. The streets were crowded with both young and old looking for entertainment. A couple of people asked us for directions, which I was able to provide.
Still, as we walked down one sidewalk, crossed the street, and back up the other side, I had the sensation of being lost. I wasn’t physically lost. I knew where we were, I knew which bar was where, I knew the streets surrounding us. What I felt was not an outward, physical lostness, but an internal feeling of sadness like feeling alone in a crowded room. That feeling rose up inside me as I listened to people making music because I knew I should be making it, too.
I thought about the term “lost” in the way many Christians use it. The evangelical world view puts all people into one of two categories: lost or saved. Which one folks are in depends on whether they’ve said a heart-felt prayer asking for salvation.
As I strolled the streets I love that night, I wondered if the Christian term “lost” might mean something altogether different. “Lost” isn’t about whether someone has uttered a few words of a prayer. It’s about not knowing who you are, not knowing how you got to where you are in your life journey, and not having a clue where to go from there.
I spent nearly forty years in church, following the directions set before me. I followed rules and guidelines and expectations, and when I took off the blinders, I realized just how lost I was. All I knew of myself was what I’d been told to believe. The longing for something more, something fulfilling, something I couldn’t find inside the church walls was my cue to get out.
Maybe there are more “lost” people inside the church than outside it.
The soul searching, the persistent questioning, the digging for something deeper are healthy ways people discover who they are. They are ways of saving ourselves from stumbling through the world without hope and purpose.
I am realizing that my salvation comes when I immerse myself in nature and art so that I can no longer distinguish between beauty and me. Salvation is not saying two or three sentences; salvation is finding out who we’re meant to be, finding beauty in a world that can often be harsh, and giving ourselves grace when we feel lost.
