“Not all who wander are lost.”

“If you get lost sit down and wait, and I will find you.”  Ralph L. Patrick

“Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree.  And he prayed that he might die . . . then as he lay and slept under the broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him.”  1 Kings 19:4-5

As a boy growing up in Northern Wisconsin my dad would go hunting “north of Glen Flora.”  It was a wild place, thousands of acres of forest, bereft of snowmobile trails or any sign of human habitation.  It was an easy place to get lost.  Dad would tell stories of hunters that had been lost there, and needed to be found.  I didn’t like hunting there.  I dreaded the times we took the drive there.  I was terrified of getting lost.  But dad always reassured me that if I did get lost, all I had to do was sit down and wait, and he would find me.

People get lost in the wilderness.  They used to, and still do.  The wilderness is a metaphor for our spiritual journey. 

It is necessary on this spiritual journey to go, or be led, into the wilderness.  If we truly want to be the person that we were created to be, that we are called to be, it is essential to get lost, to lose ourselves, and God, on this journey through life. 

The wilderness might take many different forms, and be found in a variety of locations.  It could be the life-jarring events that knock us off our feet.  It could be the abandonment of a loved one through death or divorce, leaving us to try and find our way.  It could be that we have simply been wandering listlessly and aimlessly, following paths that others have taken and told us that we should follow.  But then one day we awake from our spiritual stupor, marked by soul-sucking religiosity, to the realization that this road has led us to a dead end, leaving us lost and alone, forsaken and forgotten.

Have you journeyed into this wilderness?  Are you there now?  Do you feel as though you have lost yourself in the desert wasteland of life, and lost God as well? 

If so, I would invite you to take heart.  You are exactly where you need to be.  And for as dark, desolate and dreary as this place may be, as disheartened, discouraged and depressed as you may be, you are in the place where you will find yourself, and God.  Or perhaps better said, God will find you. Though you may feel forsaken and forlorn, I want to assure you that you are not alone.  There are others who have been in the same place that you are.  Elijah, that great prophet of God, is one of them.  I would invite you to read his story in 1 Kings 18 and 19.  Just do as my father said, and sit down and wait, and The Great Seeker will find you.

I want you to know that I know how you feel.  I have also been in that place, not as a child hunting in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, but as a man hurting and hopeless in the midst of a life that seemed to have gone to hell, literally.  For a long time I tried finding my way out, relying on my own strength which was fading fastly, my own abilities which had failed me, and my own faulty sense of direction which pushed me over the edge into what felt like an endless fall.  It was a time of refining, when all of the faultiness of my ego-driven self and phoniness of previously clung-to beliefs were burned up, burned away.  I spent long periods of time sitting in silence, in darkness and waiting.  Waiting for God to show up.  Waiting for God to show me direction.  Wait for God to deliver me.  And finally, finally God did.  God led me in a direction that I questioned, that at times I thought, and was told, was the wrong way.  A direction that required that I jettison much of what I held dear.  It required trust.  Lots and lots of trust.  I had to trust the Divine Compass, held by the Spirit, to show me True North; to show me The Way.  That’s why I call this blog and website “The Celtic Compass.”  It was in that faraway place called Iona that I found God, the REAL God, and my true Self.

What God did for me God can also do for you.  And perhaps has.  If we are fortunate, we will, like Elijah, find ourselves lost in the wilderness, as good as dead.  And it is there that God will find us, and we will find ourselves.  It is there that God will send an angel to renew our spirit with a New Spirit.  Sometimes that angel will take on human form, walking with us, guiding us, companioning us on our journey.  Reminding and reassuring us that we are not alone.  Taking us by the hand to gently lead us from the wilderness on The Way that will lead us to our Self, and to The One who has also trod the lonely way, and who walks with us, promising never to leave us nor forsake us.