Lost But Found

On Sunday, a few people from my squad and I were determined to spend our free day hiking through the jungle to Red Frog, a beach on the other side of the island.  I would like to open this blog up in full discloser by saying that we did not end up making it to the beach on our hike.

Red Frog is about a 5-minute water taxi away, which is the irony in this situation. When me, Sam, Bree, Hannah, Hadley, and Matthew decided we wanted to spend the day at Red Frog, we could have purchased a $6 water taxi and made it to the easily accessible beach. However, us being World Racers, we decided to make the day interesting and were fully convinced that we were going to successfully take a 45-minute hike instead. There’s humor in this story, but there’s also divine trust and provision that took place during this hike.

After church, we packed up our lunches and confidently headed out towards the jungle, asking a friend with YWAM who has done the hike for his instructions on the way out. Following his instructions, we went to the neighbor’s house and asked to hop their fence. On the other side of the fence was nothing but jungle. We stood and stared into the trees for about 30 seconds, took a deep breath, and then began tromping through the jungle in search for a field, climbing over trees and constantly being attacked by bugs. We did this for around 10 minutes and, honestly to my surprise, we made it to the field with the hill. We trekked up the huge hill while Hadley sang light-hearted songs, trying to distract us from the fact that one wrong foot placement would send us tumbling back to the bottom. We got to the top of the hill and walked straight. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I felt like I was on the tv show Survivor. We slid through mud, encountered snakes, balanced our way across logs, and me being me, I fell into not one, but two holes. My friend told me that one of my defining characteristics is the fact that I am a bit of a lollygagger and am free to let the wind just blow me around, so it’s really no surprise that I wasn’t watching where I was going and managed to continuously fall into holes! We did this for about an hour and a half and I think we all knew that we were not getting close to the beach. But we were in a state of denial, telling ourselves that if we just kept walking, we would eventually get to Red Frog.

“Um, guys, I hate to say this, but you might want to come look up here.”  Sam said, shortly after we had started coming to the realization that we were still extremely far from our destination. A few people made their way up the hill that Sam was on, turned around, and informed us that we had been going in one huge circle. We had no idea how far into the jungle we were, all we knew was that we had at some point been in the exact spot that we were currently standing in because of a very specific tree that we knew we had seen before. We began to get frustrated, arguing about where we went wrong and which way to go from there. In the midst of our frustration, we decided to take a moment to pray and ask the Lord for guidance. As we did this, it was almost unanimous to continue walking straight up the hill. We did, having no idea where it would take us. After walking less than a yard, we looked to our left and saw the base, our home, right beside us. We all laughed in defeat, realizing that we had been extremely close to the base the whole time, and then purchased a water taxi to take us to the beach.

That story in itself is incredible insight on what our adventure days tend to look like but let me let you in on everything that this hike reminded me about the Lord and His goodness. I think there’s potential for a few different “popcorn sermons” inspired by this hike, but today I want to focus on the fact that we were so close to the base for the whole entire hike, even when I was convinced that we were lost in the middle of the jungle. The simple takeaway from this is that even when we feel as if we are in the trenches, even when we think that we are so far away and left to be stranded, The Lord is right there! I look back on the hike and think about how all we needed to do to know where we were was seek high ground and look around. How many times do we get so caught up in the feeling of being “lost” that we forget we are already found? We as humans tend to get fixated on the here and now of situations and neglect the fact that our King of Kings and Lord of Lords has not just found us, He has set a path for us. We were practically in the YWAM bases backyard for our entire hike. We were so close yet felt so lost because we forgot to just look up. And what happened when we intentionally took a moment to simply ask our Father for His guidance? He showed us the way home! Please take a moment today, in the midst of the busyness, in the middle of the jungle that is life, and allow yourself to sit and be reminded of the fact that you are already found. And if you are feeling lost or discouraged or overwhelmed, feeling as if you’re walking aimlessly, trust that you are in our God’s backyard and rest in the safety of His guidance.