Lift up your eyes on high: Who created all these? He leads forth the starry host by number; He calls each one by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
Isaiah 40:26
Though it has been many years now, I still remember the day one of my children seemed to be lost. He was just a toddler. We lived on a generous three acre lot with hills, woodland and several places one could hide. As time ticked by my heart pounded; pounded as tears filled my eyes. We had looked everywhere. Standing from atop my front yard’s hill I looked over to the lake which was but a half block away.
“Dear God not there.”
My hands trembled from fear and my stomach churned. The search continued as my husband and I sought out where the little guy might have gone. In those moments, I dreaded the worse of outcomes.
“Too many places to hide,” I wept.
Just a few years earlier, my husband and I had gone on an adventure hike. It started in the Mukwonago area and headed west towards Palmyra. The area was part of the Kettle Moraine forest and was pretty isolated.
It was a gorgeous fall afternoon. We walked for hours talking about our future life together. Neither of us had realized the sun was nodding off for the day. We had no idea where we had ended up, but knew it was time to turn back.
This was a time before cell phones, so to contact someone was out of the question. Our only option was to briskly hurry back before it became too dark to see where we were headed. We had no flashlight, food or water and were very ill prepared to be lost in the big woods. A pleasant hike had become a nervous ordeal.
Both incidences brought up an anguishing type of fear that one would not want to go through.
If only in those days that I had known God as my Abba, Father and His Son as my Savior. We would have been less dependent on ourselves and looked to the heavens for His intervention. Perhaps, looking towards the stars that evening, lost in the woods, we would have known God had everything under control. Or a few years later, that God was carrying for my toddler. Both times He could have lit the path to our peace during a trial.
Yes, we found the missing toddler napping in an unusual place. And on our return hike a random car had passed by an open part of the trail and agreed to take us back to our car. God was looking after us even when we really didn’t know Him.
I know think of how much fear we would have missed if only we had known how to trust Him during difficult times. God longs for His Creation to find Him. He always was and will be waiting for those to call Him by name.
Jesus came for the lost.
Patti Wolf 