Are what amount to living a full life. Show me someone who is aimless, and I’ll show you someone not living their best life. Show me someone who thinks they know the goal, but is lost or else accidentally heading in the wrong direction, and I’ll show you someone frustrated with their life.
Well, at least in our goal-oriented, success-driven society, that feels rather true. And maybe that’s all well and good, as far as it goes. Two thumbs up for goals and plans. It’s just that no goal or plan ever survived in the wild, open air of reality.
The life of faith that Jesus invites us into accounts for this wildness.
Anyone intent on following him—both above and in the midst of whatever else their life may look like—will one day feel aimless and confused. Like the GPS is broken, the map is lost, and all you see in every direction is untamed and unmarked wildlands. Far from a metaphor of mere salvation, of lostness and foundness, this is just what life with Jesus is like on occasion. At various times in life, each of us will have to confess to him, perhaps sheepishly, “Lord, I don’t know where you are going, so how can I know the way?” To which he is likely to reply, with a sly look in his eye, “Sure, you do…”
Because in that mere act of confession (“I don’t know where you are going.”) and request (“How can I know the way?”), you have already recalibrated yourself in the right direction and taken the next step.
Where you are going is the Father, and how to get there is through Jesus. To a person by means of a person. Wherever on a map you may end up, the Father will be there, and whatever road it is you travel down bears Jesus’ name.
