Sometimes lost, always looking for meaning. (June 18, 2023)

Lost and Looking for Meaning.

Listen to this podcast here:  https://www.pastorwoman.net/podcast/episode/247abfb7/sometimes-lost...

Conversations are revealing.

In a talk with a friend the other day, she mentioned how lost three of her adult children seem to be.  What do I mean ‘lost’--could she not find them?  No, no, she knew where to ring each one, far-flung in different places; but lost as in lacking direction, unsure of meaning, having discounted the role of God in this life or the next. 

Here’s the question--why would three out of four children, now adults, raised in a good, loving, God-fearing home, be lost?  Hmmm.  A question about which I have had to think long and hard... a question that drives me daily to my knees.

Another question: are you aware?  Have you watched any television news, picked up a newspaper, spied your Apple news feed or checked your Twitter feed?  Many of us have tried to avoid what is called "News" at all costs, but we must not be ignorant. Stop for a minute and think how very lost we find today’s culture.

Briefly~

Truth is what one believes, whether it has any basis in reality… 

There is no right or wrong, just what is right or wrong for any individual…

History as recorded in countless books and archives is being rewritten so that what we thought we knew about ourselves, and our forebears can no longer be trusted…

Men can bear children, put on a Target swimsuit to hide their God-given parts, compete as women on the public sporting stage, use a girl’s restroom at the school event…

Marriage has been redefined—two men, two women, three people, anything goes…

Christians are painted as dim-witted, unthinking fanatics who need a crutch…

The Bible has been discounted as antiquated, misogynistic, and irrelevant…

All religions are pretty much the same; if you need that sorta thing, choose the one you want, they all lead to God…

The only meaning to be had is that which you scratch out for yourself.

If you cannot find meaning in your life, do not even know where to go to look for it, and it is just too much for you—hey, smoke weed, numb yourself with alcohol or grab some pain pills… do what makes you feel good.

If you get sick of the monotony of meaninglessness, you can always opt out…

    after all, you are the master of your fate, and the captain of your soul.¹

And we wonder why our young people are struggling with mental illness. . .  they are lost.  Totally confused about where to find direction for their shiftless existences, of course, they are lost!

     I have a solution.   

     I have a cure. 

     His name is Jesus.

Religion cures nothing and no one.  It only confuses.  Religious people are exhausting.  But Jesus?  Well … have you met my Jesus?

In him we find Truth… not arbitrary truth, not your truth or my truth, but reality, the very embodiment of it and the only Source we can access today.

We find the way to God—the only way to God, through the one way he established for us to know him, through his Son.²  Life in Jesus is for today--life as it is meant to be—abundant, filled with hope and joy, and the promise of a forever with him.

Does it get any better than that?  I submit to you It. Does. Not. 

The great thing about Jesus is that He. Really. Was.  And therefore, He. Really. Is.    You see, it is not just our gospel writers that record his life and existence, but other historians of that day… archaeology still being unearthed providing evidence of the place he was born, real places he taught and so on.  Proof of a historical Jesus points the way for us to examine what he claimed to be true, that he has gone before us to prepare a place to be with him forever.  

From the vestiges of my past, a line runs through my mind.  A little blonde girl, I was standing next to my mother, singing the beautiful old hymn.  Then I remember being seated at my piano, playing the chords for the old hymn while my brother Michael sang. The tune plays in my mind as I think how apropos the message for us today. 

“Tho’ the angry surges roll on my tempest-driven soul,

I am peaceful for I know, wildly though the winds may blow,

I’ve an anchor safe and sure, that can evermore endure.

And it holds, my anchor holds: blow your wildest, then, O gale,

On my bark so small and frail; by His grace I shall not fail,

For my anchor holds.

I can feel the anchor fast as I meet each sudden blast,

And the cable, though unseen, bears the heavy strain between;

Through the storm I safely ride, till the turning of the tide…

Troubles almost ‘whelm the soul, griefs like billows o’er me roll;

Tempters seek to lure astray… storms obscure the light of day: 

But in Christ, I can be bold, I’ve an anchor that shall hold.³

Why would three out of four children, now adults, raised in a good, loving, God-fearing home, be lost?  Because they let go of the Anchor.  The Anchor is Jesus Christ.  In Him we live and move and have our being.⁴  And here is another question: why is one of four children not lost?  Because she sought out the Truth, she knows He is her Anchor, and rather that being pulled this way and that by the tides of culture, she daily looks to Him, she reads the Word for wisdom, guidance and direction, and her anchor holds.  I guess you could say she took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.⁵

So we turn our attention back to Jesus in Mark Nine in our next Morning Briefing and our attention to this little lady from Kentucky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL475Wik0iY  

In anticipation,

Christine

PastorWoman.net

1 – Invictus, William Ernest Henley

2 – John 14.6

3 – My Anchor Holds, hymn by W.C. Martin

4 – Acts 17.28

5- the last line from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost