Lost and Found

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, February 18th, 2024:
First Sunday of Lent

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Psalm 25

R. Your paths, Lord, are love and faithfulness for those who keep your covenant.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.

R. Your paths, Lord, are love and faithfulness for those who keep your covenant.

Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. According to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! 

R. Your paths, Lord, are love and faithfulness for those who keep your covenant.

​Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

R. Your paths, Lord, are love and faithfulness for those who keep your covenant.

​Pause. Pray. Reflect.

I have a terrible sense of direction. I easily get lost in my own hometown. I rarely know the fastest way to get somewhere and, if someone asks me for directions, I’ve learned it’s better to admit I can’t help them than risk accidentally sending them in the opposite direction. I was born before modern GPS, and I remember well the challenges of road trips with gas station paper maps – how deceptively simple they seem, how easy it is to make one small mistake, and how those errors compound until you find yourself well and truly lost.

In the earliest days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, well before ideas like church and Christianity were well defined, the movement of Jesus’ followers often called itself The Way. The metaphor of paths, ways, and roads for the act of obeying God is found throughout Scripture, and it’s an apt one. Most people in Jesus’ time lived out their lives without leaving their village or ventured only as far as the nearest town. Perhaps once or twice in a lifetime they’d make a pilgrimage to a major city like Jerusalem, or if they were unlucky they might find war or famine forcing them to travel long distances on foot. Going anywhere was difficult and dangerous. It required relying on the kindness of strangers, and there was no guarantee of finding home again. 

Becoming a follower of Jesus can feel a lot like that. It requires us to leave behind the choices and sins that have become so comfortable to us. It pushes us into community with those whom we might never have sought out on our own. It may feel dangerous, may damage relationships with loved ones who don’t understand why this is so important. It is often difficult in ways we didn’t expect. 

God’s paths are not stagnant or still for us. God is unchanging and eternal, but we humans, bound by space and time, are constantly on a journey. There are always new paths that roll out in front of us – some lead toward Him, and some away. My spiritual sense of direction is better than my physical sense of direction, but not by a whole lot. Sometimes I find myself going the wrong way, but more often I simply find myself stagnating – settling down, deciding this is good enough. 

​CS Lewis once described himself before his conversion as a child content to play in a mud puddle because he couldn’t understand what was being offered in a trip to the seaside. The psalmist reminds us that when God calls us to movement, to journey toward His Way, He does so not to scare or punish us, but because He has good things in mind for us: love, truth, compassion, justice. It can be scary to move forward, and we may fear getting lost, but His maps – the Word of God, the Sacraments, the community of a thriving church – are good indeed. 



Jenna Young

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