Spiritual transformation will bring you to a place you do not recognize. I call this the spirituality of lostness. We are in good company when we are spiritually lost – Abraham, Paul, surely Mary, the mother of Jesus – felt this deep sense of unfamiliarity and aloneness. Perhaps God even becomes less familiar than you knew God to be. The spiritual map you had followed appears a bit less detailed. Friends wonder if you are moving away from God. And your spiritual practices are not aligning with what your spirit normally senses.
It is time to pull over, stop yourself, and wait. Release into the lostness. Sit for a moment, look around. This is the time to conserve your energy and not waste it fighting life’s rapids. I notice that this is the time to recall a few things:
- Recall what God has done for you? Name it, list it, and maybe even write them out.
- Recall what you have asked God to do for you? How might this lostness be part of God’s path for you?
- Recall what your heart’s desires have been? Again, this time of quiet space and reflection may have been named to God as desire of your heart.
Let us consider one of the blind men Jesus healed. The first time his eyes were open, he sees men like trees walking (Mark 8:23-25). He was lost in his sighted-ness. He was lost in the process of becoming sighted. We are rarely “air-lifted” out of troubles. Nor are we air-lifted into expanded spiritual understanding. Back to our blind man – Jesus stays with him and asks him to look up. Now, he sees clearly.
We are not air-lifted out of life and dropped into the Garden of Eden. Spiritual growth appears to be a continuous invitation to not grow weary, to control your thoughts, and to love yourself and your neighbor. One of the messages of the Gospels is to come and die. (Oh my, how we dislike this idea of dying. Yet without the dying, there cannot be resurrection.) As death of false, self-righteousness takes place, you are move into a lostness as you quietly prepare for the resurrection.