Lost?

Went for a walk today with friends. Had a book that told us the route. It was a new walk, a short walk, about 4 miles. It was pretty easy going and easy to follow the instructions. We’ve learnt over the years to keep a careful eye on where we are. It’s easy to miss a path or a guide post. Sometimes the instructions are ambiguous so we’ve learned to check and double check if there’s any doubt. Today’s walk was pretty straightforward. Until we got to the very last instruction. “Go ahead a few yards and take the footpath down the hill through the trees to the car park.” Simple. Except there was no path after a few yards. We stopped. We checked. We recalculated. We took a path we’d discounted. But it was the only option so it must be right. It must be right. Coming to a fork in the path was not helpful. Logic said go left. The phones (by now we had the walking app working with us) suggested it was a good choice. Then a crossroads and a choice of five paths. After a discussion we made a choice. But that path suddenly disappeared - it just merged into the woodland. The phones said we were heading back to the path we’d left. Another way of saying that is that we were going in the opposite direction to the way we wanted to be going. How could that be? We turned around and went back to the five path crossroads to choose another option. But then I was frustrated and confused. We knew we weren’t a long way away from the car park, but none of this makes any sense. No, really it doesn’t. The last instruction didn’t make sense. And now there are more paths than is helpful. Are we lost? How can that be? it doesn’t make sense. It simply doesn’t make sense! Much of life doesn’t make sense. The last year certainly hasn’t made sense. I once thought I knew what I thought about pretty much everything. But now….I’m not sure I know anything about anything. When I was ill with the COVID virus, I had three or four days when I was utterly convinced that I would never go back to ministry, counselling or chaplaincy work. I didn’t want to and to I didn’t have to. It was freeing. Perhaps I could have walked away from them all. Maybe. I felt lost. Completely lost. What had once seemed important and significant, no longer did. Finding faith, finding my faith in it all is a challenge. I felt lost in that too. Some of the things I had held close, I found I no longer did. The deeply held views that had helped me navigate life to this point in life, no longer seemed to fit ,or work. It was as if I was walking around in circles and going nowhere. I haven’t lost my faith. But I do feel lost in faith. The book with the walks in makes it easy to navigate a walk when everything is clear and obvious. Sometimes though, it doesn’t work like that and we get lost. The truth about life is that it’s complex and confusing. Sometimes and it doesn’t go the way we’d like or hope. Sometimes it causes us to question the very things we hold most dear. Sometimes it causes us to question faith itself. We found our way back the car park. We didn’t panic. We used the resources we had at our disposal and we used our brains! Weirdly we must have ended up on the path the book said we should take. I’m feeling a bit lost. I am having to navigate a new path through unfamiliar territory. I’ve never been this way before. And I’m not sure quite how it’s going to turn out. Here’s thought though: perhaps that’s good enough for God. Perhaps faith is sometimes about the lost times, the recalculating times, the not knowing anything anymore times. Perhaps that’s faith at its best. And perhaps that’s the place where God meets us in ways he never otherwise could.